


Lost and Found

by bunnyfication



Series: Lost and Found [1]
Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Asexual Character, Genocide, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-20 11:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13145343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyfication/pseuds/bunnyfication
Summary: They stop the minus wave. That’s the easy part.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ChandaBeard at Saiyuki secret santa on tumblr. 
> 
> Edit: I just realized, while the fight and all that is stuff I came up with, there are some Blast spoilers here, sorry about only realizing that now :''3
> 
> The bulk of it is already written, I'll just be editing the remaining chapters, tying up the main plot and possibly adding some short things later in the verse if there is interest. It started out as a post-canon kidfic that swelled up as I ended up going more in detail into my version of the last battle, which Minekura will surely do in a way more interesting way. I couldn't even speculate on what significance certain characters might have so they are largely absent here.
> 
> It's been a while since I wrote anything for Saiyuki, and this is the longest fic I've ever written, in any fandom, so I hope someone gets some enjoyment out of it.
> 
> On warnings/tags/ships: The main ship is slowburn Sanzo/Goku, Hakkai/Gojyo is heavily implied in the bg. As for warnings, there's reference to death (including of children) and some barely graphic violence, though less so than in canon. I'll add whatever warnings seem relevant to specific chapters in the notes.

Later, Goku only remembered parts of the battle at Houtou castle.

He remembered seeing the castle in the distance as they camped for the last time before the approach, perching on a peak with the strange spires of stone around it like a clawed hand.

Sanzo had stood looking at it, still as a statue.

“We don’t have much time left,” he’d said, as if they didn’t all know.

The air had felt heavy, like the feeling right before a thunderstorm, but wrong, oily. Goku could have sworn there were voices right on the edge of hearing, whispering. It might just have been the black birds circling around the castle, their calls seeming to mock them.

He didn’t know if the others heard them, but Hakkai’s posture was too stiff where he kneeled on one of the sleeping mats they’d already put out in lieu of a fire they didn’t dare light. Gojyo hovered close by, his usual jokes and relaxed attitude forced.

Later, once they’d gone to bed, Goku could hear them whispering, and didn’t listen. He wished…

“Sanzo,” he whispered, knowing that he wasn’t sleeping either.

“What?” Sanzo grunted.

Goku hadn’t thought of what to say, just that he needed to say _something_. And now he couldn’t actually think of anything.

Instead, he reached out a hand, unable to see, but finding Sanzo’s wrist anyway. When his fingers closed around it, he felt the bones beneath the skin and muscle, the steady beat of a pulse beneath his thumb.

There was something soothing about that, and Goku closed his eyes, feeling suddenly sleepy.

“Whatever happens, I’m glad I came with you,” he said, the words easy now, insufficient as they were.

The silence after was so long that Goku was nearly asleep when Sanzo shifted on his pallet. Long, narrow fingers touched his forehead, almost hesitantly at first, and then closed around and tugged at a lock of hair, once.

He blinked his eyes open into darkness and laughed sleepily, because it was such an odd, awkward gesture. Momentarily, he felt sad he couldn’t see Sanzo’s face. Then again, he was probably only this affectionate because Goku couldn’t see him.

Goku sighed and pushed into the hand that was still holding onto his hair loosely.

“Sleep, monkey,” Sanzo said, in a voice that was barely audible, and Goku did.

*

He’d dreamed, the crows circling over the castle invading every one, more and more of them until they became a black suffocating mass, stinking of blood and death.

Goku woke gagging, feeling like there were feathers in the back of his throat.

Their tiny camp was undisturbed, the bedroll next to Goku’s in no more disarray than one would expect from sleeping, and yet.

Sanzo was gone.

‘He left without us, again,” was Goku’s first thought, his heart plummeting even as his hands turned into fists.

Then he spotted a single drop of blood on the empty bedroll, and his rising ire turned into ice.

He hadn’t left, he’d been taken, Goku knew with a sudden certainty, and it didn’t matter how he did.

Later, the three of them climbed up the steep mountainside, but when they got to the castle they found only dead youkai and a deceptively small figure standing in front of the shattered castle gates. He whirled around at Goku’s unthinking shout, ready to attack, and then there was a—

 

And here, it was as if Goku’s memories became a shattered mirror, showing pieces he couldn’t properly fit together.

He found out, later, that it was the moment when Gyokumen Kyushu ordered her pet scientist to take the last steps to bring back Gyumao, having gathered four of the five sutras and deciding it was good enough, with the Warrior Prince knocking at the door.

The last pulse of the minus wave, as Hakkai said, and maybe it was stronger than any before, or maybe there was something different about it altogether.

 

Goku only knew that the oddly familiar stranger fell on his knees, his eyes wide and staring at the grey sky, which he registered in the second before there was a pain like his head being split in two.

 

After that there were only disjointed pieces and the sense of glorious freedom, a sheer joy in destruction he almost but not quite recognized.

He’d become Seiten Taisei, he supposed, later. It was always like that. Except. Not quite.

Because there was also a flood of other memories, confusing the sage and distracting him from the bloodlust. Cherry blossoms and laughter and thin bony fingers in his hair, familiar and not. ‘Too soft,’ Goku thought, ‘no callouses from the gun.’

Blood, so much blood, and loneliness, crushing loneliness like the weight of a mountain.

Goku cried, and the sage snarled, claws sinking into his palms till they bled.

They’d bound him, and he would destroy them all.

Goku loved them, and they were taken from him, and he was alone. He was alone, for so long. 

He would be free.

But he’d be alone.

The sage went quiet.

 

He remembered shocked eyes in a childish face, purple like a thundercloud but not the familiar shade, a trembling voice saying his name.

 

‘You’ll lose them again. We’ll lose him,’ a thought, the sage’s, or maybe Goku’s, or maybe it didn’t matter, and. ‘No.’

 

Fighting, glorious fighting, laughing as he fought an opponent that was big and strong and fast but not as strong as he was. Or as fast as the other, his friend, who Goku mostly saw as a flash of black and white from the corner of his eye. They worked well together, as if they’d been made for it, made to be fighting side by side.

He didn’t know who dealt the killing blow, maybe they both did.

He remembered standing across the room, the giant corpse between them, grinning, something like an answering smile in the grim face of the other.

‘Nataku, his name is Nataku,’ the memories whispered, teary and laughing. 

 

The crow bastard was dead, but Sanzo was lying in a puddle of his own blood and there was an awful wet sound while he gasped for breath. Something was burning somewhere, someone was screaming, but it didn’t matter.

 

He came back to himself to the smell of Sanzo’s blood, seeming to soak the entire room. It very nearly did, and Goku wanted to look away and didn’t. It smelled of death, and he knew it was just the other corpses no one had had time to remove, but it made him twitchy regardless.

Goku’s senses were too sharp, he felt like he could smell and hear everything in the castle, hurried footsteps in the stairs two rooms over, the sound of falling stones, someone sobbing in the distance… smoke, and blood, and death.

Hakkai, his qi reflecting in an eerie glow on his pale, set face, and Goku couldn’t tell if the vines on his skin were actually moving or just appeared to in the light. His clawed hands were stained past the elbow, not just with Sanzo’s blood. Yaone at his side still had tear tracks on her face but she was focused on her work of helping Hakkai keep Sanzo alive, her face grim.

There was nothing Goku could do to help, and the sage was growling, until there were fingers around his arm, small but strong like steel.

He was briefly distracted because Nataku smelled strange, under the gore on him. Not like a human or youkai, and something about it turned Goku’s hackles, his instincts screaming at him that there was something fundamentally _wrong_ about it. He ignored them.

Gojyo was sitting slumped against the wall, staring ahead with the blank stare of someone past exhaustion. He was pale too, blood in his hair and dripping slowly down his face and neck, and there was something very wrong with the arm he was clutching against his chest, the bones bent where they shouldn’t have been.

He frowned, and then got up slowly to stumble closer to the two healers engaged in their own fight.

“Tell me when to stop him,” he said, voice rough but even. Yaone glanced up from bloodied bandages and nodded grimly.

Goku took in a sharp breath and stood still, Nataku’s hand on his arm, and waited, his heart feeling like a stone in his chest.

*

He’d slept again, a seeming eternity later, on a wooden chair with a broken back, leaning on the cold plastered wall. His hand was on Sanzo’s wrist, one of the few parts of him that wasn’t covered in bandages. Goku could feel his pulse this way, still weak but steady now, and it was the only way he could sleep, though he kept startling awake every time someone passed by too close.

Hakkai and Gojyo were sleeping on the floor, on a mattress Gojyo had dragged in. Gojyo’s arm was wrapped up tight, set by Yaone after she and Hakkai had done all they could for Sanzo.

Hakkai would have collapsed on his patient earlier if Gojyo hadn’t held him back with his one good arm.

He slept now, looking nearly like a corpse himself, the bruises and small wounds standing out against greyish skin.

None of them had fared well in the battle, Goku thought as he woke the fifth time. Except him.

He looked down at a clawed hand, for the first time realizing he still looked like a youkai, but his thoughts were clear. His own.

Were they?

He looked for the bloodlust, like a man feeling after a lost tooth, and there was nothing more than sleepy confirmation that he liked the thought of a good battle, but not right now.

Right now, he was just tired and worried about his friends, especially Sanzo.

A shifting noise in the hallway, but Goku knew that was just their silent guard, staying outside in respect of Hakkai and Gojyo, who only knew him as an opponent and sudden last-minute ally.

“You can come in you know,” Goku said softly.

There were nearly silent steps on the stone tiles, and then the rustling of cloth, the sound of Nataku entering the room.

They were silent for a long while.

“What will you do?” Goku asked after a moment, and he heard rather than saw Nataku shrugging, his gaze settled on Sanzo’s still face.

“I think, perhaps, that I have some debts to repay,” Nataku said slowly, as if savouring the words. “And some cleaning up to do, back home,” he added, dark satisfaction in his voice.

“If that’s what you want to do, good,” he said, and Nataku laughed, humourlessly.

“I’ll do what needs to be done. But Goku?”

“Yes?”

“I think I will enjoy it,” he said it softly, and then went quiet. There was an expectation in it, like he was waiting for Goku to judge or absolve him.

Goku didn’t know much about revenge. He thought Sanzo might have had something profound and smart to say about it, if he felt like sharing. But he only knew loneliness.

“Then I hope you do, I suppose” he said instead, feeling like he was groping in the dark.

They’d been almost friends, once, a long time ago. It had happened to someone else, a Goku who didn’t know loss yet. Nataku had been his first, in that. He wondered if Nataku had ever known having something worth losing, really. If that had been their fledgling friendship.

“I hope you find something worth protecting, too,” Goku said quietly.

There was a rustle behind him, a hand settling on his shoulder. And then, hesitantly, Nataku leaned over him, his thin arms folded awkwardly over Goku’s chest, his hair tickling at his neck.

“Are we still friends?” he asked, a startlingly simple question.

Goku put a hand over Nataku’s arm, surprised once again how much smaller he was. He hadn’t grown. Could he even?

“Always,” he said.

It didn’t matter that they’d both been children, that they’d both forgotten and been formed into something else. He could still see the shape of it clear as glass, like a weed growing through cracks in stone, small and fragile but with deep roots.

“Then I have this, at least,” Nataku said, his cheek leaned momentarily against Goku’s before he stepped back, gone as if he’d never been there.

“I have to go soon,” he said, voice gone steely and dark again, focused on something far away.

Goku smiled, because it felt familiar. He turned, to memorise his friend. His oldest friend.

Nataku smiled back at him, startlingly gentle.

“Good luck,” Goku said, and Nataku nodded.

“You too. Take care of them,” He glanced at Sanzo, head tilting as he glanced between him and Goku.

“He’s so different,” he said, sounding like he was talking to himself more than Goku. “They all are.”

“What? Who?” Goku asked, and Nataku gave him a sideways glance, his mouth twisted into something that was neither a smile nor a frown.

“Can’t you tell? They returned to you. They even look alike, in these lives.”

He was going to deny it, but then he thought of Kenren’s grin and the rough way he’d ruffle his hair, the way he’d cared too much for everyone and been so bad at hiding it. Or those times Tenpou would try to explain some esoteric thing he was reading to Goku, distracted but patient, that rare soft smile of his. The way the two of them were like two halves of a coin. And Gojyo and Hakkai… they were different, except where they weren’t, not really.

And Konzen… his precious, exasperated sun.

Goku felt a wave of sorrow wash over him.

But he wouldn’t forget them again, not for anything.

He looked around at his friends, and did it even really matter if he’d known them in another life? They were just as irreplaceable now.

“I guess,” he said, for lack of anything better. “I changed too, and I didn’t even…”

“Die,” Nataku completed his sentence, and Goku shivered at the matter-of-fact tone. “You forgot. It’s not so different,” he added.

He would know, Goku supposed.

“I miss them,” he said, and Nataku laughed, the sound flat.

“They’re right here,” he said, almost chiding.

He didn’t get it, but Goku couldn’t really blame him.

“You could come with me,” Nataku said suddenly, those purple eyes drifting away from Goku’s and then back again, obviously gauging his reaction.

“I can’t leave them,” Goku said, realizing as he did he was sending his newfound friend into battle alone, against forces he knew little about. But he’d meant what he said. He glanced again at Sanzo, feeling torn between the need to help Nataku and ensure that flickering pulse didn’t stop.

Nataku sighed, a barely audible noise that Goku’s newly sharper hearing caught easily.

“I know,” he said, almost amused. “They’re your family.” And there was that deep vein of darkness again, a glimpse of a cold, deep well that left Goku shivering though he didn’t know why.

“I’ll come back later,” Nataku said, and Goku nodded, nothing else left to be said.

*

The first time Sanzo woke up, Hakkai was sleeping the sleep of a man still overusing his qi and Gojyo was away somewhere finding food.

So it was just Goku there to witness the pale lashes flutter, Sanzo’s eyes not quite focusing on him when Goku leaned over him, not daring to touch. He was bandaged from neck to waist, covering damage that Goku had seen only briefly, but which had been burned into his memory.

There had been so much blood, he thought, feeling cold. It’d been so close.

Punctured lung and severe blood loss, Hakkai had said, the first time he woke, still slurring from exhaustion. And Goku knew that was just the most immediate damage, the part that had almost killed him.

There was movement at the corner of his vision, and his gaze flickered over to Sanzo’s hand, the shape of it obscured by bandages.

Sanzo’s face twisted, probably at the pain of trying to move his damaged hand. His lips moved, though no sound came out, and then his eyes rolled up and he was gone again.

Goku sat there and breathed deep, combating a red haze that tried to descend over him.

What was the point of caring for something so fragile, came a bemused, irate thought that he didn’t recognize as his own. He growled.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hakkai twitch in his sleep, but he didn’t wake.

Goku closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyelids, pressing down until he saw red sparks form in the darkness.

What was the point of existing if he _didn’t_ care, if he had nothing to lose, he thought furiously. The not-quite-foreign presence in his head went silent, almost thoughtful.

*

Several days later, Sanzo had woken a few more times, barely, and not very aware of his surroundings. That might have been in part due to the medicines Yaone was mixing for him, carefully dosed because she hadn’t had a human patient in years, she’d said.

He hadn’t seen the prince, except once in the distance as he was getting food from one of the kitchens with Yaone and happened to look through a window.

Kougaiji was sitting on a broken wall, framed by the stone spires wreathed in high rising fog.

He wasn’t wearing his coat, and his back was hunched, shoulder blades pushing through the tan skin of his back. He looked smaller than Goku remembered, against the wide-open landscape.

Lirin was there too, blond head leaning on Kougaiji’s shoulder, her arms wrapped loosely around his waist.

Yaone was watching them too, the deep sorrow on her face making her look older than usual.

“He’s lost so much,” she said.

Goku had heard about Gojyo’s brother not long ago, how he’d been fatally wounded during the attack on Sharak’s fortress. Goku hadn’t known him well, but it was still hard to believe he was gone. He’d seemed like a good guy the few times they met.

Gojyo hadn’t seemed surprised when Yaone had told them, but he’d only said he’d had a feeling and then pressed his lips into a narrow, unhappy line, not meeting any of their eyes.

Goku wasn’t sure if he’d even cried. Maybe he was waiting to be alone.

Kougaiji looked very lonely, even with Lirin there next to him.

“His mother too,” Yaone whispered, her gaze fixed on the prince. “He did everything to save her and yet…”

“She died too?” Goku asked, and Yaone nodded.

“The pillar holding her shattered when Gyumao woke. Gyokumen Kyushu, she was laughing. I wish I could have…” Yaone’s hands formed fists and fury warped her face as Goku looked on, making her nearly unrecognizable.

Then she took a deep breath and seemed to force herself to calm, before adding in a flat voice. “She was hit by a piece of stone when the roof fell.”

Yaone smiled sardonically.

“An inglorious end, which suited her at least.”

But that wasn’t exactly satisfying, Goku read from her pensive glance towards the hunched figure of Kougaiji.

“Goku,” Yaone said, her gaze trained on Kougaiji and her face still set in that grim flat look that kinda reminded Goku of how Hakkai got, sometimes. “That boy you fought Gyumao with…”

“Nataku?” Goku asked.

Yaone nodded, still not meeting his eyes.

“I think… from what Kougaiji said, he’s the one who—” she swallowed, and then continued almost at a whisper, “who killed Dokugakuji.”

Goku shook his head.

“No,” he denied, “He was controlled, and he didn’t remember before—He didn’t even know who he was! He tried to kill me too, and we’re—”

It occurred to him and none of this meant anything to Yaone, and his shoulders slumped, but she was finally looking towards him, mouth twisted in something that might have aspired to be a smile.

“Oh,” she said, and then her face crumpled and she breathed hard, fighting the tears that welled up in her eyes.

“Ok,” she said, muffled through the fingers she’d pressed to her mouth. “Ok, Goku. I just—Just don’t mention that he was here to him. To Kougaiji. He can’t…”

She broke off and turned away from him, letting out a single sob before going quiet except for her choppy breathing.

Goku wished there was something he could do, but he didn’t know Yaone well enough.

Poor Kougaiji, he thought, looking out the window.

“At least he has you and Lirin,” he said.

Yaone sighed.

“Yes, at least he has us,” she said softly, voice still thick with tears.

*

They shared the room for as long as they stayed at the Houtou Castle, despite the multiple empty rooms.

For a while, Sanzo wasn’t stable enough that Hakkai felt comfortable going too far. Besides, no one said it, but whether it was the memory of the battle or something less definable, they never got comfortable there.

To Goku it felt like there was a sustained note in the air, just on the edge of hearing, shrill and _off_. Except it wasn’t really a sound. He tried to explain it exactly once and got mocked by Gojyo, though Hakkai just hummed and looked thoughtful.

Either way, they stayed in the single small room without discussion.

One evening, at the point when Sanzo was getting well enough to be irritated he was still too sick to leave bed, Gojyo turned up with a bottle of something very alcoholic he’d found in a storeroom somewhere.

He and Hakkai drank most of it. Gojyo handed Goku a cup but the liquor smelled dreadful and tasted worse, so Goku wrinkled his nose and put it down.

Sanzo glared at the two others, probably irritated at Hakkai’s decree that he wasn’t well enough to drink yet.

Earlier that day, Goku had seen Hakkai frowning down at a thermometer before nonchalantly putting it away when he’d stepped into the room. Like he couldn’t tell at a glance that Sanzo was running a fever, with his glazed eyes and the altered smell of the medicines.

He’d have to have a talk with them soon, especially Hakkai. Sure, he got that they were nervous about the no-limiter thing, but he felt fine. And he didn’t want Hakkai hiding stuff from him about Sanzo. When had he ever needed that?

Currently, Gojyo slumped back on the mattress he and Hakkai were sharing, the cup in his hand sloshing dangerously but barely retaining its contents.

“So much for the hand of Buddha closing in on us or whatever that baby-hag said,” he said, not exactly slurring but with a certain looseness to the words.

Hakkai giggled, the noise still as incongruous from him as the first time Goku had heard it years ago.

“Can you believe it’s over?” Gojyo continued, “Feels like we’ve been travelling for twenty years, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not over,” Sanzo muttered, one hand making an aborted movement towards a robe sleeve he wasn’t wearing, before his brow furrowed in further irritation. His voice was still rough like he’d been swallowing broken glass.

Then he slumped against the piled pillows on the bed with a harried sigh. The usually fine lines on his face looked deep in the candlelight, his skin pale under the flush of fever.

Gojyo grimaced at him from behind his cup.

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” he replied. “Sorry for being glad we all somehow managed to survive.”

“Too bad,” Sanzo replied flatly, but he almost sounded distracted, and he didn’t say much more as Gojyo and Hakkai continued to drink until Gojyo slowly keeled over into the bed, sideways with his legs spilling onto the stone floor.

Hakkai giggled some more and then manhandled him around and tucked him into bed, smoothing the bedding over Gojyo’s chest while he snored loudly and Hakkai perused him like, Goku imagined, a mother might behold a sleeping baby.

Then he frowned, slowly and looking bemused, before pulling the sheet off so he could get into bed too, sighing contentedly as he snuggled up to Gojyo, who shifted a bit and then turned to flop and arm over Hakkai.

Goku snickered and then glanced at Sanzo.

His eyes were still glazed from fever where he half-sat against the pillows, head turned towards Hakkai and Gojyo. And this was the startling thing: He was smiling, a soft expression that almost made him look like someone unfamiliar.

Goku swallowed hard and looked away before Sanzo noticed him staring.

*

There was a curious thing which Goku noticed as Sanzo slowly regained enough strength to leave his bed and started to make short trips around the castle.

He couldn’t tell, initially, if it was just his senses, which seemed to fluctuate from better than before to so good it was disorienting, but it seemed he could always find Sanzo, now.

It might have been the sutras, which, Goku had realized, had an odd resonation he could just about make out on the edge of his perception if he looked for it.

But he was pretty sure it was Sanzo himself. If he wanted to find him, he only had to look for a sense of… something, and he knew which way to go. It reminded him of something that Hakkai had read to him from a biology textbook long ago, about how some animals could always find back to where they were born, by some mysterious means the book hadn’t really explained.

He hadn’t told anyone yet, about that or the weird thoughts he had sometimes. They were under control, and they’d only worry, probably.

This time, he was looking for Sanzo because he’d been away for a while and Goku wouldn’t put it past him to overextend himself and be unable to return on his own power. It had happened before.

He found him on a balcony overlooking the bleak valley around the castle. Sanzo was sat on a stone bench, propped up in a corner. His body was held stiff and his brow was furrowed. He was probably in pain, Goku thought, irritated.

“You shouldn’t be sitting here alone,” he said, sharper than he’d intended, standing in the doorway. “One of the youkai still here might carry a grudge.”

Sanzo whirled around, looking startled, and then his face twisted briefly like the movement had hurt, before he hid the wince under irritation of his own.

“I know that. Kougaiji was here until just now,” Sanzo snapped.

Fair enough, Kougaiji had said they were under his protection, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to Sanzo if he was there.

Sanzo was wearing an unfamiliar padded jacket Yaone had borrowed them. It was too large on him, black and embroidered with red thread, and it made him look washed out and tired. Which he probably was.

Goku immediately felt bad for arguing with him.

“Goku, come here,” Sanzo told him after a quiet moment, and Goku stepped forward to sit on the bench next to him.

“What?” he asked.

Without hesitation, Sanzo suddenly slapped a hand on his forehead, a familiar glow of light nearly blinding Goku before he had time to react.

He winced in expectation of the awful pressure that seemed to burn right thought his skull… except, he never remembered this part did h—

There was a sense of the pressure tightening, but before it could fully close, it seemed to hold back, right before there was a sense of something _snapping_ , like a rubber band extended too far.

Goku blinked as someone gasped as in pain, and then the light faded too, leaving dark spots dancing in his eyes.

“Sanzo?” he asked, but he could only hear harsh breathing.

As the dark spots faded, Sanzo was clutching his bandaged hand with the other, staring at it with wide eyes.

What had just happened?

Oh.

“You tried to put the limiter on me?” Goku asked, perturbed. “Why? I’m not…”

Sanzo shook his head sharply and interrupted him. There was sweat beading on his forehead, and he was sagging forward slightly.

“I needed to know if I could,” he said harshly, like there was gravel in his throat.

An awkward silence descended on them. Goku wanted to protest he didn’t need it, and then wondered if the abject dislike of the idea was all his. Or if it mattered?

“I’m not gonna hurt anyone,” he argued anyway. “And you’re still sick,” he added, even knowing Sanzo wouldn’t appreciate the reminder.

Looking over at him, Goku could tell he was definitely in pain now, hunched over around his middle and breathing with difficulty.

“You need to see Hakkai,” Goku told him, frustration colouring his voice.

He stood up, not looking at Sanzo, and held out an arm to him abruptly.

“Come on,” he said.

After nothing happened, he looked over at Sanzo. He was smiling at him, in that dry crooked way he did sometimes.

Then he gave an unimpressed look at the arm thrust in front of him, before grasping it and using it to lever himself upright, moving like a much older man.

They made slow progress back to the room, Goku holding up an increasing amount of Sanzo’s weight, but by unspoken agreement neither of them commented on it.

*

The dragons in front of the castle were bigger than the ones Goku had seen Kougaiji’s group use before.

Hakkai was standing on the castle steps, Jeep curled in a disgruntled necklace around his shoulders while Hakkai tried to appease him. He didn’t like the idea of them riding other dragons back home, and had been sulky since they’d first been presented.

Or maybe it’d been the way the bigger dragons had first crowded around him and Hakkai, startling Jeep into flight as the big heads tried to get close to him, peering at him with wide-eyed curiosity and puffing air out of their nostrils while Jeep made alarmed shrill noises and flapped his wings.

Goku got the feeling he’d found the experience deeply embarrassing afterwards, judging by the way he’d hid under the covers in Hakkai and Gojyo’s bed and hissed at anyone who approached.

Either way, they were now preparing the big dragons for travel, large basket like seats rigged over their backs, for carrying supplies and riders. Apparently, it was for more comfortable long-distance travel.

“Or invalids,” Lirin whispered in Goku’s ear while Sanzo wasn’t listening.

“They’ll know the way home when they’re no longer needed,” Kougaiji explained after instruction in dragon riding. Goku had already done some practicing with Lirin, the few times she wasn’t at her brother’s side. Even Lirin was subdued, and Goku could begin to see how she might be when she was older. She was already different from the loud brat he’d first met years ago.

He’d noticed they didn’t like to leave Kougaiji alone, her and Yaone, and seeing at the hollow look of him he understood why.

As the others did the last preparations for travel, he and Lirin were checking the dragons, Lirin showing him what to look out for.

“Sometimes they get these nasty parasites under the scales… but I suppose you’ll only have them for a week or so.”

She scratched the dragon on the thinner skin under the jaw, and it made a low rumbling noise.

“That’s a good girl,” she mumbled.

She glanced at where Kougaiji and Sanzo were standing some way away from the others. Sanzo was leaning on a building and looking irritated, but he did seem to listen to whatever Kougaiji was saying.

“They’ve been talking,” Lirin said quietly. “Have you noticed?”

Goku had.

“Yeah,” he agreed cautiously. He’d caught some of it, by accident, and hadn’t stayed to listen. Kougaiji had been talking in a low voice, and there had been such raw emotion there… he wondered what Sanzo had told him. He wasn’t exactly good and consoling someone.

Maybe he’d just listened.

Lirin was still giving him an expectant look, so he said:

“I didn’t listen to them but… I don’t know, do you think it helped?”

Lirin gave her brother an evaluating glance.

“Dunno,” she said, “maybe.”

“He’ll be ok, eventually,” Goku told her, hoping it was true.

Lirin grinned, a bit of her old self shining through.

“Yeah!” she exclaimed. She poked at a stone embedded in the dirt.

“After his mom… you know. It was scary. I wasn’t feeling so good so I--,” she blanched, halting.

Goku didn’t know the details, but he knew Gyokumen Kyushu and that scientist had done something to Lirin, had been using her as part of the experiment. He’d noticed she’d been wearing long sleeves and trousers since then.

“You helped him though, didn’t you? Yaone said that didn’t she?” Goku said.

He’d not really been listening, because Sanzo had only just stopped drowning on his own blood and Gojyo had been cursing at Hakkai for almost killing himself to achieve that, but he remembered the sound of Lirin crying and Yaone telling her she’d done a good job and everything was going to be fine.

Lirin gave him a shaky smile.

“Yeah, she did,” she agreed.

“He said he’d burn this place, after you leave…” she added, biting her lip as she glanced at the castle towering over them.

“Oh?” Goku asked.

“I think I’ll be glad.” Lirin said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sanzo and co. return to Chang'an, leave on another journey and find a baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: aftermath of genocide, violence.

Riding on a flying dragon the trip took a ridiculously short time. It was pretty exiting too, Goku thought, though Sanzo didn’t agree with him initially.

He’d strongly protested accepting the ride, but then Hakkai had pointed out they didn’t have a working credit card anymore, and Sanzo had gone grudgingly quiet.

He slept for a large part of the journey, curled over a pile of supplies, and was still exhausted and crabby whenever he was awake.

“His lungs were in bad shape, and there was only so much we could do,” Hakkai told Goku while they were filling up their water and letting the dragons drink on their second day of travel.

Sanzo had been coughing a lot that day, and there was a rasp to his breathing that Goku didn’t like the sound of.

“They’ll probably never be quite as good as before,” Hakkai admitted. “He should really stop smoking for good, but…” he sighed, and Goku winced.

That didn’t seem likely to happen.

*

One and a half weeks later, they were back at the Kei’un monastery in Chang’an.

Their arrival caused a big hubbub, and the monks tried to throw up some kind of festival to honour their mission and got glared down by Sanzo.

Of course, that didn’t stop people showing up and wanting to talk to him about how amazing he was or whine about how they were still scared about youkai and various other things.

Hakkai told most of them politely but firmly that Sanzo was still recovering and couldn’t receive visitors. Goku wished it wasn’t so close to the truth.

It should have been nice being home, except maybe they’d been gone too long. Gojyo had been right, felt like a lot longer that it had been.

And Chang’an was different too. Quieter, somehow. When they went to the market, there were less stalls than Goku recalled, and he noticed a lot of the houses along the way had heavy doors and window shutters. And the city had a wall now, with guards at the gate.

He saw someone he knew and greeted her, and she went pale and flinched violently, before blinking at him in confusion.

“Goku?” she said, disbelievingly.

Even after he explained the lack of limiter, the discussion ended awkwardly. She waved at him and told him to visit the bakery and say hello, but Goku could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

Gojyo threw an arm over his shoulder after she had walked away.

“Hey, why don’t we go see if Old Ling is still in business and makes those dumplings,” he said.

Goku appreciated it, really.

Hakkai and Gojyo were staying at the monastery, because when they went to check their old house it had collapsed. Besides, though he didn’t say it outright, Goku knew Hakkai wanted to keep an eye on Sanzo in case he got worse suddenly.

So they stayed, on the pretence of looking for a new place. Which shouldn’t have been difficult, what with all the empty places in town, but neither of them seemed to be looking that hard.

Even the monastery seemed to have found ways to function without Sanzo, insofar as he’d ever done much of the detail work of running it.

The four of them were rather like extra cogs thrown into an already working machinery, bouncing about and getting in the way more often than not.

Goku wondered if Sanzo was feeling that too.

It might have been just him being ill, or suffering from cutting back on cigarettes, but even on the days when he wasn’t coughing a lot, Sanzo just seemed like there was something missing.

Sometimes he paced like a caged animal, snarling at anyone who crossed him path. Other times, he lay in bed staring at the wall, one hand resting on the rolled-up sutra in his lap.

They’d left the two extras with Sharak on the way home, Sanzo gruffly telling her to figure it out, but he’d kept his own and the Seiten. The one he’d been looking for since before Goku knew him.

On the quiet days, Goku tried to talk to him, and got distracted nods and hums in reply. Then he was intentionally annoying, but half the time Sanzo just told him to shut up and turned his back on him, and then Goku just felt bad.

*

One morning, he stepped into Sanzo’s office and found him reading a letter while Hakkai sat at the small table at the side and pretended to read a book while actually observing Sanzo.

Sanzo got a lot of letters, but most of them ended up burned after being vetted by Hakkai and then dismissed.

Goku got a feeling that even Hakkai mostly read them because he was bored.

For the first time in a while, Sanzo seemed fully awake as he scanned the letter.

“What’s that?” Goku asked.

“It’s from someone my master used to know,” Sanzo told him distractedly.

Gojyo leaned in through the doorway.

“Hakkai said you got a letter, anything interesting?” he asked, and Sanzo grunted in reply.

He put the letter down, and gave Goku and Gojyo a supercilious look-over. It almost felt like old times.

Even more so when he shook out a cigarette, ignoring the narrowing of Hakkai’s eyes as he lighted it.

“It’s an invitation,” Sanzo said, punctuating with a first drag of the cigarette.

“Uhuh,” Gojyo said. “And are we going?”

“We are,” Sanzo replied, continuing to smoke with relish.

“Where to?” Hakkai asked.

“Mount Huaguo in Jiangsu,” Sanzo, said, prompting a silence, into which Hakkai spoke, sounding pinched:

“That’s over 1000 kilometres away, Sanzo.”

“So?” Sanzo asked, giving him that same supercilious look.

“We’ve been here for just a few months, after several years of travel…”

“ _So?_ ” Sanzo repeated, with a mean grin.

“So you can’t just order Hakkai to drive you that far on a whim, you shit-monk,” Gojyo argued, earning an evil eye his way.

“What, because the lot of you are so busy smooching off the hospitality here, right?” Sanzo hissed venomously, and then was interrupted by a coughing fit, almost crushing the still burning cigarette.

“Actually, I don’t care what you bastards do, I can walk,” he rasped out.

“Yeah right,” Gojyo muttered, and then glanced at Hakkai. Hakkai shook his head, but Goku saw he was smiling behind the hand he’s raised to his face.

At least Sanzo was still himself?

“I do wonder what the Three Aspects will think about it,” Hakkai thought aloud.

Sanzo snorted.

“Like I give a shit,” he muttered.

 “I hate to agree with Cherry here, but yeah. Those chuckleheads fired us once already and we still did their dirty work, least they can do is cut us some slack now,” Gojyo said, ignoring the way Sanzo glared at him over the old nickname.

They left about a week later, setting off before sunrise and without informing anyone of their plans, besides leaving a note in Sanzo’s room.

Gojyo said he wished he could have been there to see the stuffy monks’ faces when they read it, and Goku could only agree.

*

There was familiarity in travelling, and at least this time there was little risk of being attacked by youkai.

Even with the minus wave gone, the effects of it were not. They passed more abandoned buildings and even villages than Goku could count. Many of the villages they did see were fortified in some manner or other. When they met people on the road, a lot of them gave them wary, suspicious looks.

Goku took to wearing a bandanna after a few meetings that ended in outright violence the moment his ears were noticed, though he couldn’t do much about the claws.

Once, they passed a macabre arrangement of several dead youkai, hanging from gallows right next to the road, the bodies mutilated either before or after death.

Goku could still smell the rotting bodies for almost a kilometre after, and there was an unpleasant silence hanging over the car for far longer than that.

By silent agreement, they stayed away from any settlements, and Goku stayed behind whenever they needed more supplies.

One such time, he was mournfully wondering if he was ever going to be able to visit a restaurant again, while Sanzo dozed under the shadow of a tree.

The travelling was hard on him, physically, but he seemed in a somewhat better mood than before, at least that day.

After Goku sighed for the third time, Sanzo snorted under the shade of the sedge hat he’d positioned against a tree behind him.

“Shut up,” he muttered, but there wasn’t much bite to it.

Taking it as invitation, Goku edged closer. Maybe it wasn’t too bad, getting to just relax for a bit. Daringly, he laid down on the grass next to Sanzo, almost close enough to touch.

It was late autumn, the nights already cold, but most days were warm as long as the sun was out, like now. The grass they were lying on was dry and just a shade darker than Sanzo’s hair when Goku glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

Goku listened to the sound of him breathing, the slight rasp of it familiar by now. Hakkai had said he might never quite recover. Goku tried to not think about that.

Sanzo was tough. He’d survived so many things before, he couldn’t just… not do that now, after everything. Maybe the strange behaviour Goku had noticed was just because he was finally at peace now?

Maybe he didn’t seem like he was really _happy_ , but that might just be how Sanzo was.

Goku didn’t like to think that Sanzo was simply incapable of being happy, but at anyone could be at least content, right?

He sighed again, but Sanzo didn’t comment on it, and when Goku looked over he’d fallen asleep, face slack in a way that made him look strange. Younger.

Goku moved his hand the last few inches to touch Sanzo’s. His fingers were cooler than Goku’s, and they twitched slightly at the touch, curling around his. He frowned, and Goku held his breath, only letting it go when Sanzo’s brows smoothed out again.

His heart felt heavy with tenderness, and he grinned ruefully.

“You’re still trying to carry it all on your own, aren’t ya?” Goku muttered, and Sanzo made a noise in his sleep, his brow furrowing again.

“Yes yes, shutting up right away,” Goku said, chuckling.

*

On the third day of travelling, Goku spotted a pillar of smoke in the distance.

He could smell it too, a mixture of burning wood and the less pleasant smell of charred flesh, a smell Goku wished he didn’t recognize.

“Hakkai, I think someone’s died,” he said, and could see the tension in the way the other man was clutching the wheel.

“The question is if we are to get involved or not,” Hakkai said, and they all looked towards Sanzo from old habit.

Who was, unlike usual, hesitating, a frown on his face like he was trying to discern something in the distance, not that there was anything to see but the road and the pillar of smoke off to the side.

“You’ve already decided anyway,” he said at last, sounding frustrated.

There was a nearly overgrown road that Jeep luckily managed to drive through, and then the forest opened out to a grassy hill, with a settlement of few houses built downhill.

Most of the buildings were on fire, and there were a few corpses scattered around them, and no movement they could see, apart from some clothes flapping on the clothesline off to the side.

Other than the crackling of the flames and Gojyo cursing under his breath it was eerily silent.

They got out, and the first corpse they found was a young man with sandy brown hair and several arrows protruding from his chest. His face was frozen in a snarl. He was also clearly a youkai, as were all the other dead bodies they found.

“A lot of them were just kids, why…”

Gojyo’s voice was rough, probably not just from the smoke he’d inhaled checking the burning buildings for survivors. They hadn’t found any.

Gojyo rubbed at his arm and winced, looking quizzically at a mild burn on his forearm as if he couldn’t imagine where it came from.

“Gojyo, let me look at that,” Hakkai said.

He had been quiet for a while, his expression too still since they first saw the smoke.

Goku sighed. They’d been too late to even confront the attackers. The only sign that the villagers hadn’t gone down with a fight were a few pools of non-youkai blood, but there were no human bodies left. Assuming some of them died as Goku suspected, they must have been carried away.

He looked away from Hakkai and Gojyo, standing close together as Hakkai healed the insignificant burn and Gojyo protested half-heartedly that it would heal on his own. They both probably needed it, Goku supposed.

 “Where’s Sanzo?” Hakkai asked suddenly, voice tense, and Goku started.

When had he last seen him? He’d been so focused on checking the houses, but had Sanzo even followed them down the hill? Goku couldn’t recall seeing him.

What if there were survivors, confused and angry at any human they saw… Goku closed his eyes, holding back on the panic as best he could, and just feeling for the sense of _Sanzo_ that he’d found he had now.

He wasn’t far away, Goku’s inner radar told him, and he took off in that direction, ignoring the way Gojyo called after him to wait. There was still the possibility that Sanzo had found trouble, and Goku wasn’t taking any risks.

He crashed through the underbrush in the forest surrounding the village, barely noting the branches that whipped against his skin, until he found a path leading in the right direction and was able to run faster. He was running downhill now, and on one side he could see water through the trees, probably a lake.

He was able to smell the blood first, sharp tang of it in his nostrils, but it was youkai, not human. Definitely not Sanzo’s, which Goku would have known immediately.

Just moments later he saw the corpse of a youkai woman, lying on her stomach on the shore, her blood soaking into the sand of the tiny beach. The youkai had probably been coming here to get water and wash, since it wasn’t too far from the village.

There was a splashing sound, and Goku looked up from the woman to see Sanzo wading in the water. He stumbled, already waist deep, and Goku didn’t hesitate before going after him.

“Oy, Sanzo!” he called, and the man started, stumbling again so that his sleeves sunk deeper into the lake water.

Goku figured why he was having trouble soon, as he stepped on the slippery stones that covered the river bottom just a few metres from the sandy shore. It was easier for him, with his feet calloused from years of walking barefoot, and the claws helped too, but he still stumbled a few times.

“What are you doing?” he called out, splashing towards Sanzo. The water was cold this early in the spring, and Sanzo’s health hadn’t been the best since the injuries he took in the battle. He shouldn’t be here.

Sanzo didn’t reply right away, frowning. Then he pointed towards something further on the water.

Goku had to shade his eyes of the sunlight reflecting off the surface, but if he squinted he thought he could see an object bobbing on the nearly still water, quite far out on the lake.

“What’s that, a basket?” he asked, looking at Sanzo in confusion.

“Yes,” he said, gaze fastened on the floating basket, with a strange expression on his face. Goku thought he knew Sanzo well, better than most people, but sometimes he was still a mystery.

Well, he knew what he could do, at least.

“I’ll get it for you then!” he said, and then, when Sanzo didn’t move “go back to the shore.”

He held his breath, but Sanzo just gave him a cool look, crossing his arms. He might even do it, if Goku didn’t push him, and Goku wished briefly he could just pick the frustrating man up and carry him off to the shore to dry up.

But Sanzo would never forgive him, so he just sighed and slid into the water to swim towards the floating basket.

“Goku!” Sanzo called, and he turned, already far enough his feet didn’t touch the bottom. “Careful with it,” Sanzo told him cryptically, and Goku nodded.

Why a basket? He wondered while swimming smoothly through the cool water, not so bad now that he was used to it. Did they youkai woman set it out on the water before she was killed? In that case it must have been something important… oh.

He reaches the floating basket, the shore far behind him by then. Even before he reached it, he could smell the contents, a soft-pungent scent of sour milk and skin. He could also hear a faint wheezing of sleeping breath.

Goku swam closer, careful not to disturb the water too much, but the basket still bobbed slightly on the waves his movements created. It was deep and tightly woven, with handles on each side and a larger one in an arc over the top. He turned it in the water, just enough to see inside while using his feet to keep afloat.

The youkai baby in the basket was sleeping. It was startlingly tiny, with a round puffy face and some wisps of pale silvery hair on its head. One tiny fist peeked out from under the blankets it was wrapped in. As Goku turned the basket, the tiny face crinkled, and then the baby opened its eyes, pale green and serene.

He expected it to cry, but it didn’t, just smacked its lips and then yawned, before seeming to fall asleep once more.

Goku glanced towards the shore, where Sanzo standing next to the corpse of, probably, the baby’s mother. How did he know they’d be here?

He shrugged mentally, leaving the question for later scrutiny. For now he’d focus on getting the basket to shore, hopefully without being subjected to screaming. It would be slow going, swimming with just one hand. 

*

Later, Goku and Sanzo had trekked back to the village and Hakkai had inspected the baby and declared it a girl who was probably less than a year old, though he didn’t state that with much confidence. Then, a tense silence had descended over the group.

Sanzo was smoking a cigarette and looking cold in his still wet clothes, and Goku caught Hakkai giving him concerned looks but not saying anything. He knew Hakkai had been giving Sanzo serious talks about how his lungs couldn’t take the extra stress anymore. He also knew Sanzo had been smoking less, but less for him was far from nothing.

It worried him, but the only person who could make Sanzo stop smoking was himself and there was no saying he would. And it wasn’t happening at the moment, that was certain.

Gojyo was hanging over the basket, peering into it like he’d never seen a baby before, while both Hakkai and Sanzo were giving it conspicuous space.

“It’ll probably get hungry soon,” Gojyo said, “Not an expert on babies or anything but they do that a lot, right? And it must have been a few hours since… you know.”

“Yes, no doubt,” Hakkai agreed, voice just slightly strained.

“Great,” Sanzo muttered under his breath between drags at his cigarette, and then coughed, dry and hacking.

The baby woke as Jeep’s motor started and began to cry, a piercing sound that made no one’s mood better. She swung her tiny fists in distress, her face growing nearly purple and furrowing until it looked like a pickled plum. Goku picked her up and tried his best at soothing her but it had no effect.

“Uh, I think you’re supposed to hold up the head or something?” Gojyo told him, and then muttered something about exes with babies.

Listening to those cries made Goku’s stomach pinch with sympathetic hunger. Briefly, absurdly, he imagined complaining about it. Sanzo would probably shoot him on the spot, Goku thought, looking at his hunched, livewire-tense back.

They drove on, the silence only broken by the sound of Jeep’s motor and the baby’s crying, sporadic by now. She was drooping, and that worried Goku too, even as he was glad of the lessening volume of the crying. How long could a person that small go without eating? They’d given her water earlier but had nothing a baby could eat with them.

No one said anything, but they were all tense and ready to be attacked until they were well away from the village. Even the baby went quiet after a while, eyes wide and alert as of sensing the mood in the car. It was only when Gojyo groaned and slumped in the seat when she started and began to cry weakly again.

“Shit,” Gojyo mumbled, “not again. Nearest village we get, we have to find some baby-food or something. What do babies eat, Hakkai?”

Hakkai laughed, high and slightly deranged.

“I haven’t the faintest idea, Gojyo,” he said.

“Guess we’ll just ask,” Goku said, slumping in his seat himself. His head was starting to hurt, and he was miserably hungry. He almost envied the baby, he wanted to start screaming too.

Hopefully youkai babies could eat human baby food, since that was probably all they’d find, he thought. The baby let another piercing cry, and Goku rocked her with a deep sigh.

“I know you’re hungry Huamei, I’m hungry too,” he muttered.

Gojyo raised an eyebrow at him.

“Huamei? Like a dried plum?” he asked incredulously.

“Huh? Yeah, I guess? She looks a bit like one, doesn’t she?”

Gojyo gave the baby a long look before letting out a bark of laughter and shaking his head.

“Yeah maybe but you can’t call a girl that…”

“Could. Everyone shut up. Right. Now.”

Sanzo didn’t scream or take out his gun or anything, and their chatter was cut as if with a knife. The baby went quiet too, like it had before when it had sensed they were in danger.

Goku wondered if human babies did that or if it was a youkai thing. Or just this one. He’d never spent much time with babies.

Gojyo motioned at Sanzo with his head and mouthed ‘losing it’ his eyebrows adding a question mark. Goku just shook his head, sincerely hoping that wasn’t the case.

It had been a long day, and it wasn’t nearly over yet.

For one, they hadn’t yet discovered the problem with diapers, which was an all-around traumatic experience.

*

They got some rather strange looks at the restaurant yesterday, more so even than usual. Goku supposed that a Sanzo priest, three guys and a baby was still quite an odd sight, even with the baby’s long ears covered by an oversized beanie. Especially when they were arguing about how to feed said baby something called formula that looked rather like thick milk or thin gruel.

One of the waitresses, a young woman with hair cut very short, kept glancing their way, moving about like nervous bird, before she came over, leaning over the baby.

“There’s… if you need help warming the food, I can do it at the back,” she said, speaking a bit too quickly, one hand tugging at the long sleeve of her black dress. She hesitated, her gaze jumping between them, before settling on Goku, who was holding Huamei.

“Just, please follow me,” she said, her smile not reaching her eyes.

She led Goku and Huamei to a tiny staffroom in the back, where she showed him how to mix up and warm the formula. She said her name was Jiao.

Jiao glanced around furtively, before pushing up one sleeve of her shirt to show a bracelet that sat snugly against the skin of her wrist.

“A monk made it for me,” she said quietly. “After… after. He came from the mountain.”

“Oh,” Goku said, and Jiao looked at him briefly, nervously, before her gaze flitted away again.

“Is she yours” she asked hesitantly, nodding towards Huamei.

“No, we found her at a settlement not too far from here, they’d been attacked,” Goku explained awkwardly, and Jiao’s face went shuttered.

“I… knew about them. They were living so openly, everyone was talking about it.”

“Do you know if any of those people has any family left around here?” Goku asked, but Jiao shook her head.

“No, they came from further east,” she said. “I could have told them it was too soon,” she added quietly, before glancing at Goku.

Jiao laughed, bitterly. “I’m taking a risk even talking to you, but that baby… what are you going to do with her? Find someone to take her in in the town near the monastery? I know there are more of us there, mostly hiding. Safer too, the monks at least try to speak on our behalf…”

He was wearing the bandana and gloves Hakkai had handed him before they’d driven into the city they’d found on the map. But he supposed a youkai would know, just from his scent, if nothing else.

She was fiddling with the limiter on her wrist, the tips of her fingers going to the place where her cuff hid it, again and again.

Jiao bit her lip, staring down at the formula in the small pot.

“This will do in a pinch, but it won’t be good for her in the long run,” she muttered, and Goku wasn’t sure she was even talking to him anymore.

Huamei had fallen asleep after eating, out like a light. She must have been exhausted, Goku had supposed.

Sanzo looked tired too, but he told them to get moving after they’d eaten, not waiting for the rest of them to get up before striding out.

He was smoking again when they caught up to him, leaning heavily on Jeep, and ignored the pinched look Hakkai threw at him.

“We have to go back and bury them,” he said.

“Yeah, I bet we’ll see your highness with a shovel,” Gojyo quipped, but it was obviously out of habit.

Sanzo was in no shape to dig graves and they all knew it.

They were all quiet on the ride back, tense again as they approached the village. There was less smoke now, but the fires weren’t totally out yet.

When they got there, Goku vaulted out of the car and then hesitated, looking back at the basket with the sleeping baby, then at Sanzo who was indeed settling back in his seat for the long run.

It seemed somehow wrong, leaving a baby with Sanzo. What if she began to cry? Could he deal with a crying baby? He didn’t even like older kids, let alone babies. But they didn’t have much of a choice, did they?

He left with another apprehensive look back, before shaking his head.

Burying the youkai villagers was grim work. Goku tried to focus on the movements. The dug a large hole at first, and then carried the bodies on a piece of tarpaulin they’d found in a shed.

 A lot of them weren’t that big, and he especially tried not to think of that.

Seeing the details of everyday life scattered all around was almost worse than the bodies themselves. The toy horse in the middle of the yard. The fat cucumbers and pumpkins in the vegetable patch that no one was left to harvest.

Huamei could have been one of the dead, easily, he thought as he and Hakkai were carrying her probable mother from the shore. She had the same eyes, and fair hair like Huamei had. He wondered what she had called her daughter. There was no one to ask.

When they were done with the graves, Sanzo walked down the hill, carrying Huamei, who was awake and alert again, her eyes wide and almost scared. She was clutching at one of the sutras, tiny fist crinkling the cloth.

That was strange too, Sanzo letting someone touch them, Goku thought. But Huamei wouldn’t know, would she, being a baby.

The sun was setting, the last rosy rays of it still touching the hill, but where they had dug the grave there was only shadow, and a rising wind left Goku feeling chilled.

Sanzo looked distant as he read the prayers for the dead, a grey figure in the falling dusk, with little more colour or animation than the youkai they’d just finished covering up under a layer of dirt.

Goku himself felt exhausted in a way he couldn’t recall being after a long day of fighting on the journey. Looking at Hakkai and Gojyo, he reckoned they all were ready to crash, but no one suggested staying there after Sanzo was done.

Even if it wasn’t for the risk of the human attackers returning, he didn’t think any of them would have wanted to sleep there.

By the time they got back to the city and got rooms at an inn there, Goku was ready to collapse. He put the basket down on the floor and fell on the bed, thinking he’d get up in a moment to strip out of his clothes that still stank of smoke.

*

They were on the journey, being attacked by youkai as usual. Goku jumped out of the car, nyoibou  in hand and crashing into the skull of a youkai with a wet crack.

He grinned, happy to be able to move after the hours spent cooped up in the car.

There was someone behind him and he ducked, the air whistling as something brushed past where his head had been, and then Goku swung around to strike at the attacker.

She went down limply, neck at an angle no living person’s could be, eyes staring glassily up at the sky and mouth slightly open.

It was Huamei’s mother.

*

He woke up abruptly, breathing hard. He could still smell the smoke from yesterday because he hadn’t taken off his clothes, and now the bedclothes smelled of it too. Gross.

Over the stink of smoke, he knew right away that Sanzo was in the room, smelling of cigarettes but not smoking one at the moment.

Goku opened one eye, and saw the back of Sanzo’s head where he was sitting on the floor, back against the side of Goku’s bed. He was leaning forward so that Goku could clearly see the back of his neck even under the long wisps of blond hair that covered it.

There was a faint scar right over the bony ridges of his vertebrae above the two sutras resting on his shoulders. It bothered Goku a little that he couldn’t place when that exact injury had happened. But then Sanzo did have a lot of scars, and not all from after they’d met.

When he raised his head from the pillow just a little, he could see that Sanzo was looking down at Huamei, his brow furrowed with some unnameable feeling.

Huamei was squinting up at him. Or maybe she was looking at the end of one of the sutras hanging above her, because suddenly one of her tiny hands struck out and grasped it firmly. She immediately made to pull the cloth towards her mouth.

Sanzo huffed out a breath and tugged the sutra away, leaving Huamei staring in confusion at her empty fist before her face crumpled threateningly.

“Don’t you dare,” Sanzo said sharply, and Huamei sniffled a few times but then sighed as if greatly put upon and settled. Her hands curled around the edge of her blanket and pulled it up to her mouth to chew on instead.

“Morning, Sanzo,” Goku yawned, half sitting up in bed.

Sanzo didn’t reply, which was usual for him.

It was nice, having him this close in the morning while they had nothing urgent to do and he wasn’t in a bad mood.

Idly, Goku wished he could touch too, stroke a hand through that blond hair that he knew was fine and soft to the touch, unlike his own hair. He thought about the scar and how it would feel to put his lips to it, and then deliberately thought about something else. Anything else.

Changing diapers? Ok that worked only too well, Goku thought and wrinkled his nose before slumping back onto the bed.

Sanzo leaned further against the bed, his arms folding over his knees. He coughed, and Goku tensed but it didn’t turn into a fit this time.

He was looking kind of grey anyway, the shadows under his eyes harsh and purple, his cheekbones standing out too sharply.

Goku looked away, swallowing. He didn’t really want to think about that. Even thinking about the events yesterday was less depressing.

“Do you think it’ll get any better, with time?” he asked.

“Hardly,” Sanzo replied. “The youkai are being quiet now, perhaps, but they’ll start fighting back soon enough, and it’ll just give humans more excuses to attack them.”

“So you think it’ll be like Gojyo said, the last one standing will be a human?”

Sanzo’s hands twitched where they rested on his raised knees, and he made an irritated sound.

“Probably,” he said before getting up, one hand briefly pressing down the mattress next to Goku, nearly touching him.

The little finger and most of the ring finger was gone, but the remaining ones were familiar, with the blunt nails and nicotine stained tips.

Goku wanted to grasp that hand and ask Sanzo to stay, but he didn’t. Sanzo only stayed when he wanted to, and had an excuse.

Sometimes, guiltily, Goku missed the chain smoking, because it had kept Sanzo in one place for hours, still and sometimes, if it was a good day, almost relaxed. Now he seldom seemed even that peaceful.

“I don’t know what to do,” Goku said aloud after Sanzo had left.

Huamei let the spit-darkened blanket fall from her mouth and made an inquisitive noise, her eyes searching before they settled on Goku. Then she made another noise and gestured with a fist, impatiently and with a furrow of her brows.

“Yeah, why don’t we go find breakfast,” Goku told her, smiling despite himself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrive to Shuilian monastery, Goku watched Sanzo sleep and does some thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: masturbation

They got a late start that day, but Hakkai said they had less than half a day’s travel left anyway. They did drive wrong and had to ask for directions a few times, so by the time Jeep rumbled up the steep mountain road leading towards the out-of-the-way location, the sun was beginning to sink low in the sky.

The mountain was surrounded by forest, dark green and already mostly in shadow. Goku could see fields and buildings in the horizon. Hakkai had mentioned there was a city not too far from the place. 

Eventually it was safer to continue by foot, though none of them were exactly thrilled by the realization.

Huamei had slept for most of the journey, only waking a few times to announce she was hungry or needed a change of diapers. Every time it had prompted an argument on who would do it this time, with Sanzo predictably and firmly exempting himself. In the end they just took turns, and for the first time Goku cursed his new sharp senses.

She woke when they exited Jeep, head moving around quizzically until she seemed to conclude that the change in affairs was nothing to be concerned about and she began to chew on her blanket instead.

The basket was heavy on top of the rest of their luggage, so they took turns in carrying that too.

Huamei lay in it as it swung, peering up serenely and occasionally making little noises. Goku had gotten the impression that babies were difficult, but Huamei was pretty easy to handle, so far. She slept a lot and only cried when she really needed something.

He grinned down at her, and could have sworn she smiled back at him.

The sky was turning pink now, the last rays of the sun hitting the higher peaks in the distance, like they were topped in gold. As they walked, Goku kept feeling strangely like he’d seen those forms before, even though he’d never been to this part of the country.

The road narrowed further, parts of it clearly built by humans long ago. He brushed a hand against the stone at the side of the path. It still kept some warmth from the sun that had touched it not too long ago.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” Gojyo asked dubiously, grimacing as he pulled at a strap from his heavy bag that was digging into his shoulder.

“As far as I can tell, never having been here before,” Hakkai replied with a fake smile, causing Gojyo to sigh and glance at Sanzo, walking last and without luggage.

Before Gojyo had time to say anything, Goku hastened to say.

“Well if we don’t find it we can always stay the night in one of the caves!”

“Eh, what caves?” Gojyo asked.

Of course there were caves, Goku thought, and then wondered how he knew that.

“Uh… Hakkai said something about caves before… right?” he looked hopefully towards Hakkai, who looked bemused.

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised with this kind of geography but…”

Gojyo leaned in close to Goku with a faux concerned expression, before knocking on his forehead lightly.

“Starting to go senile now, eh monkey? Going straight from being a brat to an old man, that’s tragic…” he sighed theatrically as Goku sputtered.

“I’m not…! If anyone’s gonna go senile it’s an old lecher sprite like you!”

“Gojyo, Goku, please…” Hakkai demurred ineffectively. He had Huamei’s basket on his arm, the big handle hanging from the crook of it like he was carrying a shopping basket.

They might have argued more, but there was an… absence.

Goku looked around, and realized Sanzo was standing right where the two of them were blocking the path. He was just looking at them with a blank expression, and not even like he was preparing to pull out a weapon. He was just there.

“Uh,” Gojyo said into the silence.

“Move,” Sanzo said, and, probably in shock over the lack of anger in it, Gojyo did, pressing back against the stone wall so Sanzo could get by between them, continuing to walk onwards along the path. He was limping a little, Goku noticed.

“Is he…” Gojyo began to say and then didn’t finish the sentence. Hakkai was looking after Sanzo too, with by now familiar concern.

“He’s just tired,” Goku said, too loudly and surprising even himself with the vehemence in his voice. “Let’s get going,” he added, ignoring the look Gojyo was giving him.

It might have had pity in it, and if Goku looked too closely he might have wanted to start a _real_ fight. There wasn’t enough room here for that.

The road widened again, enough that three people could have comfortably walked side by side. It curved around the side of the mountain at a gentle slope upwards. When they came fully around the bend they saw a wooden gate ahead.

The top beam had clearly once been elaborately carved, but was now so weatherworn it was hard to tell what it was even meant to be. Chips of gold paint still hid in the deeper swirls of the coiling dragons with their chipped, worn forms.

“We should be close now,” Hakkai commented cheerfully.

“Fucking finally,” Gojyo said, like an echo.

Beyond the gate, the path continued in the form of long stairs, as well worn as the way so far had been.

After seemingly endless stairs, they arrived at the top and were met by a much bigger gate, this one complete with watch towers and heavy brass doors.

“They should have been expecting us,” Hakkai said as they stood there in silence looking at the closed doors. “Though there was a bit of an unexpected delay,” he glanced meaningfully at the basket that Gojyo had just put down on the ground, shaking out his arm and grimacing.

Goku stepped forward and knocked on the door, which shuddered and made a dull sound under his fist.

Almost immediately, a face peered out from one of the towers, a monk judging by the shaved head. He was squinting in the near darkness.

“Who’s there? What’s your business here?” he asked, looking them over.

Sanzo had been looking worse for the wear after the long climb, but as Goku watched he visibly gathered himself to meet the guard-monk with his usual haughty expression.

“Genjo Sanzo, 31st of China, here on the invitation of Abbot Seiran,” he stated coolly as the monk’s eyes widened.

“Oh! I heard you might be coming. You and your companions,” he added. “I’ll let you in right away, just a moment.”

He disappeared from view, and shortly after there was a sound of bolts being removed, a large lock being turned, and then the great door was slowly pushed open. The monk was now accompanied by a younger man, barely more than a boy, who was yawning and rubbing at his eyes as if he’d just woken up. He was holding a lit lantern in one hand.

“Welcome to Shuilian, please excuse the wait and step in,” the monk said politely, waiting until they were all in before laboriously closing, locking and bolting the door again. “We always close the gate at sunset and keep it locked until sunrise,” he explained.

“That seems prudent?” Hakkai commented politely, and the monk nodded.

“All the more in the last years… and with such important guests, now,” he said politely.

Then he seemed to notice Huamei, blinking in surprise.

“Oh, I wasn’t told there’d be…” he looked at all of them in turn, as if looking for an explanation.

“There wasn’t, we found her on the way,” Sanzo offered gruffly.

“Yes, there was a small settlement of youkai who appeared to have encountered some conflict. She was the only survivor,” Hakkai explained, in an even tone. A bit too even, Goku thought. He was as tired as the rest of them, he’d bet.

“How unfortunate,” the monk muttered, and Goku thought he meant it. “There are many orphaned youkai children recently. I believe the abbot is still working, and we’ve arranged rooms for you already if you wish to freshen up? Unless you’d rather meet him in the morning?”

“I’ll go see him now,” Sanzo replied tersely, and then as Hakkai cleared his throat meaningfully, Sanzo gave him an irate glance but added. “After dropping off all this shit.”

Goku thought he saw the monk’s mouth twitch, but he didn’t otherwise react to Sanzo’s coarse language, a point in his favour, if anyone asked Goku. Sanzo couldn’t be expected to be polite when he was this tired.

“Very well,” the monk said, “Shun, would you see to it that they get to the rooms and whatever they need?”

The younger man nodded sharply, looking more awake now.

“Right away, sir,” he replied, before gesturing for them to follow. There was a smallish courtyard beyond the gate, wreathed in shadow beyond the small circle of light made by the lantern. They passed another heavy door, this one left open.

“I supposed this one could be closed for defence as well?” Hakkai commented as they passed, and their guide, Shun, nodded.

“There are towers on it too,” he said, pointing out the structures with their ornate roofs.

“That seems unusually military for a monastery,” Hakkai said, and Shun shrugged with a small smile.

“I suppose, but we have a fair number of relics here… and I’ve heard some of the past holders of the Seiten scripture lived here, though the last one was when the current abbot was young.”

They walked through a few more courtyards and then across a balcony of a two-storey building built on a sheer stone wall, Shun telling them to watch their step as it was fairly narrow. Goku glanced down but could only see the stilts holding up the structure, some narrow ledges and billowing clouds of fog below that.

To the side, he saw a few similar buildings, looking like they had grown out of the stone.

“Just a bit more ahead, here, the steps might be a bit slippery at this time so watch your step…” as he led them down stairs carved into the stone.

He stopped at the next balcony and opened a door, waiting for all of them to get inside before closing it.

Inside, it smelled of old wood and incense, and below it, stone. As they walked along a hallway that stretched out further than could be expected from the narrow look of the house, Goku realised it extended inside the mountain.

“It’s not a large monastery,” Shun was saying, his voice low, probably in respect of the late hour. “But we have more than enough rooms.”

As they passed several doors, Goku could smell and hear the inhabitants. Many were sleeping, but he heard low voices talking in one room, before the door opened and a bald head peered outside curiously.

“What’s happening, Shun?” the young man asked, and then his eyes widened as he saw them. “Oh, it’s the Sanzo party? Cool! Welcome to Shuilian!”

There was a noise from the room across the walkway of someone turning and then a muffled “shut up Joshin…”

Shun was glancing at them and looking embarrassed. “Um,” he said, and then straightened up. “Since you’re awake, you can help get some warm water for them to the eastern mansion.” he told the other man.

“Ugh, ok, sure. Just a moment. You guys, come help me with that,” he said to someone inside the room.

When Goku glanced back, he could see two more heads peering through the doorway, and then hear a hushed conversation in their wake.

Shun was still looking embarrassed.

“Sorry about those guys, sirs,” he muttered.

Sanzo just grunted in reply, and Shun winced. Then he winced for another reason as Gojyo grinned and thumped his shoulder.

“Look, kid, we’re just a bunch of troublemakers, so none of that sirring.”

Shun gave him a nervous smile.

“If you say so, si, um, Mr. Sha,” he said dubiously.

They turned a few more corners and walked over a short walkway to another building, the four floors of it standing alone on a ledge protruding out of a corner of the mountain, so there was open air on all three sides of it.

“This is the eastern mansion. We’ve prepared the middle two floors for you. The second for your holiness and the other for your companions.”

The walkway had led them directly to the second floor, and Shun showed them around. This one had a narrow hallway with stairs at the end, letting into a common room and behind it, a bedroom dominated by a large and intricately carved bed. There was a smaller unobtrusive door at the side, but Shun didn’t remark on it.

“Oh look, they made up the wedding bed for you,” Gojyo commented, snickering.

Sanzo gave him a disgusted look, while Hakkai laughed politely.

“I believe that would be a traditional design from the Ming-dynasty, Gojyo, which would account for the similarity,” he said, while Gojyo rolled his eyes.

“Sure, nerd,” he said fondly.

Shun led them on, now blushing, to the third floor, which held a hallway and three bedrooms, not as large as the one on the previous but comfortable enough. Goku picked the first one, dropped his luggage on the floor, along with the basket with Huamei, and then fell on the bed, testing the mattress.

It was nice to have one, he’d forgotten how rough sleeping outside was in the few months since they returned from India and before setting off here. And then his stomach growled loudly.

Shun let out a nervous laugh where he was still hovering in the doorway.

“Ah, I’ll see about getting food. Joshin and the others should be here with water for washing in a moment, and, um, everything else should be ready?”

“Yes, thank you so much,” Hakkai replied, already returning from surveying the other room.

They ate in the common room on the second floor, since it was the one with a table in it. Huamei’s formula was warmed on a little coal burner in a pan that Shun had brought. She ate and then blinked sleepily up at roof once being laid back in the basket.

“She sure can sleep,” Gojyo said, poking at Huamei’s forehead with one finger and then grinned as her eyes went crossed.

He was leaning over the basket one moment, and the next yelped as Huamei grasped a lock of his hair in each hand and gave it a firm tug.

“Augh!” Gojyo hissed. “Owowow! Leggo you…!”

Huamei just burbled and brought the hair to her mouth, ignoring Gojyo’s protests.

He finally managed to free his hair, but Huamei was left with a few long strands of red.

“Sonofabitch,” Gojyo cursed, over Goku’s laughter and Hakkai’s chuckles.

“Language Gojyo, there are children present,” he said mildly.

“Like she’s gonna remember,” Gojyo grumbled. “Ow, how can a kid that small have such a strong grip…”

Sanzo had been sitting quietly at the table for most of the dinner, picking at his plate. Now, he took out a cigarette and after some more rummaging in his sleeves, a lighter.

“Ah, Sanzo,” Hakkai began.

“What?” Sanzo asked tersely, putting down the lighter he’d raised to the cigarette hanging from his mouth. “I’ve told you I—”

“Well, _your_ health is your business, I suppose,” Hakkai said, his tone saying he really didn’t suppose it. “But there is someone else with fragile lungs here too.”

He glanced meaningfully towards Huamei’s basket.

Sanzo seemed unimpressed, but tsked and got up. 

“Fine! I’m going to smoke _in my room_ , you bastards finish eating so we can go greet the abbot,” he said over his shoulder on the way to the bedroom

“Thanks for the company to you too,” Gojyo called sarcastically and got a raised middle finger from Sanzo. Gojyo snorted and lay back on the floor.

“So, how long do you think we’ll be sticking around here?” he asked after a while, glancing at Hakkai who was still nursing the last of his tea.

“That would… depend on Sanzo, I suppose. He hasn’t exactly shared his plans with me,” he said in between sips.

“Dunno if he knows either,” Goku replied slowly. “We just came here right? We haven’t even met this abbot dude yet.”

Hakkai hummed thoughtfully, and they spent a few minutes in rare comfortable silence as the familiar smell of cigarettes drifted in from the other room.

After a while, Hakkai set down his once again empty teacup and frowned.

“Goku, would you…” he began, but Goku was already on his feet.

“Yeah,” he said, walking over to the bedroom door and stepping inside cautiously after there was no reply to his knock.

Inside, the air was cool and smelled of cigarette smoke. When he stepped in further he could see Sanzo had opened the window behind the bed and moonlight was streaming into the otherwise dark room.

He was asleep, sitting up with his back against the frame of the bed. One hand was resting on the window sill, the cigarette having fallen out of lax fingers and extinguished on its own, luckily.

Goku tiptoed closer, leaning on the side of the bed to observe him.

This trip really had been tough on Sanzo, he thought. The moonlight left him bleached of what colour he had and showed the shadows under his eyes in sharp relief against the pale lashes. He looked distant, in that light, asleep and still except for the slow rise and fall of his chest under the white robes.

And then, as Goku stood there looking, his lashes fluttered, and his eyes opened just a little. His face was too relaxed, and his eyes didn’t quite focus, which told Goku that he wasn’t really awake.

When Goku reached out a hand he leaned into it. His cheek was cool from the night air, and Goku frowned, thinking of the time last month when Sanzo got rained on while out on a walk and then got feverish for a week.

From _rain_!

Goku could feel the slight unevenness of scars on Sanzo’s face under his fingertips, from when Kougaiji had burned him.  They didn’t show much, but the skin had slightly different texture there.

Sanzo mumbled something indistinct, still asleep, and Goku thought what it said that he didn’t wake, even though Goku was touching him.

Well, he was probably really tired, but still… and maybe he shouldn’t be doing this, Goku thought with a stab of guilt. It was a bit creepy, when he wasn’t awake.

When Goku really wanted to kiss him, and other things he tried not to think about while Sanzo was right there in case he saw.

What was it Hassan had said after he’d tried to kiss Sharak? That he failed as a companion, for wanting more than that.

Goku hadn’t thought he ever would. He still didn’t. He just wanted Sanzo to be… content, at least.

Because he’d noticed long ago he wasn’t, a lot of the time. When he’d thought about, which hadn’t been often, Goku supposed he’d hoped things would be ok after they defeated the bad guys and Sanzo got his master’s sutra back. If not better at least… but it was like they were worse, somehow.

It was getting to Goku, and he still didn’t know what to do.

“Noisy,” Sanzo said quietly, his eyes still half-open and dreaming, even though Goku hadn’t said anything. Goku leaned his head down, something caught in his throat.

Approaching footsteps behind the door, a moment’s hesitation, and Goku had leaned back by the time Hakkai actually opened the door, his face inscrutable as he surveyed the two of them.

Sanzo started, waking properly and squinting at the two of them irritably.

“What?” he asked, voice rough, and then moved to stare in dismay at the dead cigarette, before flicking it out the window.

“Well, it was a while…” Hakkai began and trailed off mid-sentence.

Goku didn’t like the look he was giving him. It was too neutral, and made him feel more antsy when he was already… whatever. This sucked.

“We’re supposed to go see that abbot guy, aren’t we?” he said, and it came out too abrupt and loud, but he didn’t really care.

Hakkai’s eyebrows rose and Sanzo gave him an odd look too, but Goku was already stomping out of the room, ignoring whatever Gojyo was saying.

He suddenly wanted to be alone, properly alone. Except the damn monastery was built on a damn mountain and there was no damn way out, not one Goku knew anyway. He walked briskly, almost at a run, and passed the walkway, and the hallway and then turned the other way from where they had come, and climbed up some stairs and through a pagoda at the top and down more stairs and then—

There was the sound of water, trickling, falling over stone.

A waterfall, the drops glistening white in the moonlight, and at first Goku thought the stone behind it was just dark from the water, until his eyes focused properly, and he realized it was a cave, with a rocky path leading to it.

Goku didn’t like caves, but there was something about this one that intrigued him. Or maybe it was just a welcome distraction. Before he could do more than look at it, though, he heard a voice calling his name.

A very familiar voice. And an irritated one.

He took one last look at the cave before going back the way he’d come.  Sanzo and the others were standing at the balcony of the building where Goku had turned the other way, together with Shun who looked first harried and then relieved when he saw Goku.

Sanzo just looked pissed.

“See there, a monkey’s not gonna fall off a mountain,” Gojyo said, possibly to Shun since the boy offered him a nervous smile in reply.

“Where the hell did you think you were going?” Sanzo asked almost at the same time, and Goku felt his hackles rise again despite himself.

“Nowhere!” he snapped, and Sanzo’s eyes flashed in reply to the tone and he opened his mouth to say something when Hakkai spoke over him, in that faux-cheerful way that fooled no one.

“Well!” he said, and then after a slightly too long pause: “We shouldn’t keep abbot Seiran waiting, I’m sure he needs his sleep too.”

Sanzo’s lips snapped shut, his eyes still flashing with irritation. Goku looked away.

After being led through the monastery again on a slightly different and more complex route, they found themselves at a yet another small courtyard, the two-story houses topped by heavily ornamented roofs.

Most of the latticed windows were dark, but Shun took them towards the single through which a light was shining, opening a door and announcing them, his voice shaking slightly with nerves.

There were two monks in the room. One sat at a writing table, presumably a secretary of some kind. Goku presumed the older monk was the abbot.

He surprised Goku.

He noticed the scars on his face first, like someone had tried to claw it off and just barely missed. And as he stood up, with some difficulty, from behind his table, Goku realized he was missing an arm as well, one sleeve of the heavy robes he was wearing empty.

He might have just been in an accident, but there was something about him that told Goku’s instincts that this man had been a fighter, once. Maybe something about the still sharp gaze and how it swept over them, evaluating.

Abbot Seiran nodded, his lips curving into a small but genuine smile.

“Welcome to Shuilian, Genjo Sanzo and companions,” he said, bowing.

Sanzo inclined his head in reply.

Seiran walked around the table, leaning heavily on a walking cane. His eyes crinkled as he surveyed Sanzo.

“We have met, as it happens, but I don’t expect you would remember,” he said.

Sanzo narrowed his eyes in consideration, and then said:

“No, I’m afraid.”

Abbot Seiran nodded.

“What happened at Kinzan was… unfortunate,” he said slowly, old sorrow in the words. “I lost more than one old friend that night.”

Sanzo met his gaze with an inscrutable look, and after a moment the old man continued:

“But that was a long time ago. I can’t say I expected you to make such a long journey, especially so soon, but it’s a welcome surprise. If I may, I’d wish to congratulate you on completing your mission, I know there are many with reason to be thankful that the minus wave is gone.”

Sanzo was frowning by the time he was done.

“Perhaps,” he replied tersely. “And many for whom it matters little.”

Abbot Seiran smiled, but it was a wan.

“True, perhaps,” he agreed. “There is much work left to done, certainly.”

Sanzo nodded, grudging even in agreement.

Abbot Seiran looked towards Huamei’s basket.

“I heard of the incident you encountered on the way,” he remarked as he walked over to sit down again, gesturing for them to follow suit.

“I’m afraid it’s not the first of that kind that I know of. Many are finding it difficult to believe that the minus wave is truly over, or to care that the youkai were not fully responsible for their actions. There were problems before, but now…”

“They want an eye for an eye,” Sanzo said, his voice cold. “It’s human nature, don’t you think?”

Beside him, Goku heard Hakkai make a small noise that might have been a stifled laugh.

“You agree with them?” Abbot Seiran asked, his voice mild and neutral, almost distracted.

For a moment, he and Sanzo surveyed each other, some nameless tension hanging in the air, and then Sanzo snorted and broke it.

“They’re idiots,” he said. “It’ll bring them nothing but more misery.”

Abbot Seiran set his one hand on the table, the knobby fingers laid flat.

“Indeed,” he said. “I’ve done what I can, sent envoys to speak to leaders and regular people, and others to aid returning youkai… but it feels at times as if trying to stop a falling avalanche…” for some reason, the last made him smile for a moment, and then he shook his head.

“Be that as it may, it will not be solved tonight, and I’m keeping you awake after such a long journey.”

Shun, who had been in the process of yawning, blinked and then went red as the abbot’s eyes flickered amusedly in his direction.

“Yessir!” he said, and then his face crumpled in dismay. “I mean, agh, nevermind…” the last came out nearly at a whimper, and Goku could see even the secretary was hiding a smile behind the stack of papers he’d picked up to supposedly straighten.

“Yes, why don’t you take them back and go to bed yourself, Shun,“ the abbot told him kindly.

“Yes, thank you sir,” Shun mumbled, his face flaming as he bowed deep.

The boy was nearly stumbling as they walked back, yawning several times.

“I do think we’ll find the way from here,” Hakkai told him, after the third time.

“Oh, I… my room is on the way, but if you’re sure…?”

“Yes, thank you.”

That being agreed, Shun bid them a sleepy good night from the door of one of the rooms in the hallway where they’d met the monk whose name Goku had already forgotten, and they went ahead to the eastern apartment and made for their own rooms.

They drew lots on who would have the baby for the night and consequently be on diaper duty, which Gojyo lost, grumbling about Hakkai cheating, somehow.

Goku lay in bed, listening to the sounds of Hakkai and Gojyo going to bed in their rooms, until it got quiet.

He lay awake, finding he was tired but not sleepy, the tension from earlier keeping him awake.

Finally he sighed and pushed his pyjama pants down past his hips, taking himself in hand, determined not to think about anything in particular. Or at least any _one_ in particular.

Think about… hands, that was good, moving down his body like they meant business, not hurried but brisk, determined, but touching him all over, almost greedily. Strong hands, with long fingers, callouses where—and a mouth, a bite here or there.

He twisted at a nipple and bit his lip so as not to make any noise, thrusting into his other hand, coming so fast it was almost dissatisfying, and then lay there breathing fast.

It’d been a while since he’d had a chance to be alone, since before they’d left Kei’un.

Goku sighed, staring at the shadowed ceiling. No more direct moonlight, it must have moved to be above them by now. He felt less antsy now, but heavier.

He closed his eyes and breathed, thoughts returning to what he’d been trying to avoid before.

Sanzo.

When did he realize…? He’d probably loved him since he saw him, because how could he have done anything different.

Now that he had all his memories, he wondered if… but no. Sanzo and Konzen may have had the same soul, but they weren’t the same _person_.

And maybe Goku wasn’t either, whether because he’d forgotten or because he’d grown. So yeah, he’d loved Sanzo because he was the one who had reached out and pulled him out of the cave, and because he was the one Goku had trusted to make everything right and because he wanted to stand at his side and do what he could to help him carry that burden on his shoulders.

Even if, maybe, Sanzo really couldn’t make everything right after all, and was just stumbling along the best he could like they all were. 

When was the first time he thought about… the other thing?

Probably that time after he fought with one of the kids at the monastery, mad because Goku had won one too many times playing catch that day. He’d called him a name, Goku had gotten angry but not angry enough to forget he wasn’t supposed to hit the other kids because he was too strong, so he’d just shouted instead, and then they’d both gotten told off for being loud.

Later that day Hakkai had visited to teach him writing, and Goku had looked up from his picture book to ask (he snorted to himself recalling it now, eyes still closed)

“—Hakkai, what’s a catamite?” he’d asked.

Hakkai had gotten this pinched look on his face and asked him where he’d heard that, and Goku had explained that Zhao had called him that but he didn’t know what it meant either, just that an older monk had said Goku was one and it was something bad.

At which point Hakkai looked even more pinched and asked Goku if he recalled their talk about how babies were made and why he couldn’t go bathe in the river with the baker’s daughter, which he did (and besides had already known from Huan whose family kept pigs, seriously, he just hadn’t thought it had anything to do with him and Lan going swimming).

And after a lot of talk that only kinda seemed related to the topic, Hakkai sighed and said:

“What they think… or claim to think, is that Sanzo has, ah, touched you, in a special way. All over, without clothes. Like how Lan’s father was worried you and Lan might have, and why he got mad.”

“Oh,” Goku said, and then “And that’d be bad?” It didn’t sound bad, inherently. He liked Sanzo touching him, those rare times he did. Although if he was naked that might be… that was kind of a strange idea. Not necessarily bad but. Strange.

Hakkai coughed, sounding like he was choking a little, and Goku forgot about the tingling sensation in his stomach in lieu of giving him a concerned look.

“Well,” Hakkai managed eventually. “At your age, yes. Or, if you didn’t want him to… really, Goku, it was more of an insult on Sanzo than on you.”

And then he’d gotten rather loud and wanted to find Zhao right away to make him tell which monk had said that so Goku could make him take it back. And he had too, or at least that guy had gotten a nasty surprise one day when he woke up. Goku grinned viciously to himself.

But yes, it had taken him several more years to really figure it out, but in hindsight that was the first time the idea had presented itself, in anything resembling concrete form.

He’d been such a child back then.

Strange to think that Sanzo had been younger then than he was now… insofar as they knew how old he was, anyway. Those 500 years in the cave didn’t really count, and there was little sense of time in his new-old memories of heaven. It felt like he’d been there a long time and no time at all, at once. Maybe time moved differently there, or maybe he’d just been so young…

Goku drifted to sleep between one thought and another


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goku meets more new people and scares some monks.

He slept badly that night, dreaming about wandering endlessly thought long hallways. He knew he had to get out fast or something awful would happen, but he couldn’t find any doors or windows. The hallways had the dank smell of a cellar, somewhere deep underground, and they kept getting narrower and narrower, until he had to bend down to walk, running because the time was running out, and all the while there was less room to move forward and the air itself was getting thicker…

He flailed awake at a thunderous banging noise, and it took him a moment to realize that was someone knocking on the door. And his face was pressed into the pillow which was why it was so hard to breathe.

Apparently, their breakfast had arrived at sunrise along with another young monk, one with a stern, closed face.

Hakkai and Gojyo emerged looking as ill-rested as Goku felt, or possibly worse. Only Sanzo managed to rebuff the heavy knocking accompanied by aggressively polite invite to eat breakfast, by lieu of simply refusing to make an appearance, from what Goku could gather.

The dour monk was a youkai wearing a limiter, though Goku couldn’t see one on him. With the robes that wasn’t odd, exactly.

“My name is Taian and I would be pleased to serve you, esteemed guests,” he snapped, before kneeling to set out the food, back ramrod straight even as he had to lean over the table.

It was one of the most awkward breakfasts Goku could recall. Taian seemed disinclined to take any hint that they could eat without assistance, and his foreboding presence was almost enough to make Goku lose appetite. Almost.

Goku watched with horrified fascination as Hakkai set down his empty cup and Taian's hawklike gaze noticed it. They both reached out for the teapot at the same time. Hakkai was raising an eyebrow, but Taian wasn't backing off an inch, seemingly intent to wrest the pot from Hakkai--

“Morning!” a cheerful voice intoned, before yawning. “Oh, you’re up already?”

They were, because Taian had woken them.

The guy from yesterday... Joshin? Blinked at the tableau around the table.

“What are you doing Taian?” he asked, and the youkai-monk's fingers slackened on the pot just long enough that Hakkai could pull it away. Meanwhile, Taian was glaring at Joshin.

“You're late,” he said darkly, but Joshin just shrugged good-naturedly.

“I was up late carrying water for these guys,” he said. “Figured they'd want to sleep late too, after just arriving so late yesterday.”

“You were supposed to be sleeping and letting Shun do his own work,” Taian argued. “And you're insulting the esteemed Sanzo-party!”

“It's really not an insult, he's only stating the truth,” Hakkai commented gently. There were slight shadows under his eyes.

Taian's back straightened further, somehow, and then he bowed deeply, forehead almost striking the table.

“I see! I apologise profusely!” He barked.

“It's, uh, cool,” Gojyo replied weakly.

“Taian, come help me get more water,” Joshin suggested diplomatically, before dragging the other monk with him. They could hear Taian arguing with him as they walked away.

“Well,” Hakkai said, sipping his tea.

“Didn’t know there were youkai monks,” Gojyo muttered, before yawning. “And is it just me or are there a lot more around here with limiters?”

“The monks in this area have been active in making them available, I suppose,” Hakkai agreed. “It’s quite a rare skill, from what I’ve understood, but perhaps there is a more active tradition here.”

They could hear Joshin and Taian’s return from their approaching voices, Joshin’s amiable and Taian’s clipped, before they arrived with more water.

“That should be enough for today,” Joshin remarked as he set the buckets down with a thump. “But don’t worry about asking for more anytime.” 

Sanzo turned up sometimes after they’d left, still looking groggy.

He stumbled over to the table and stared quizzically at the teacup and plate Hakkai pushed in front of him, before picking up the cup and ignoring the food.

There wasn’t much food left at that point, apart from the plate saved for Sanzo that he would probably leave nearly untouched, so Goku was playing with Huamei, insofar as it was possible to play with a kid that small. She mostly seemed interested in grabbing things and putting them in her mouth.

He was feeling restless.

“I think I’ll go look around,” he said to no-one in particular.

Sanzo looked up and frowned.

“Don’t break anything,” he said, and for him it was in a mild tone, but for some reason it grated on Goku nevertheless.

“I won’t, I’m not a kid,” Goku replied, and saw from the narrowing of Sanzo’s eyes it had come out too combative. And probably sounding childish, damn it.

“We’ll see about that,” Sanzo replied meanly.

Goku took a deep breath not to say something he’d regret, and just walked out.

The parts that seemed to be living quarters were quiet at this time, most of the monks presumably out and about. The door at the end of the hallway was locked, so Goku turned to walk the familiar way out.

He was already starting to feel bad about taking that tone with Sanzo. Not so much because he’d be hurt, it took more than that to hurt him, but because there had been no point.

He’d practically started a fight with him over nothing, and he wasn’t even sure why.

On his way through the labyrinthine system of stairs, houses and courtyards on the wider terraces, he met a few monks or novices that gave him curious looks but continued on their way with no more than a polite greeting.

After a while of walking at random west and upwards, he got to a wider slope where there were no buildings, although there were clear signs the area was in use, based on the numerous trodden paths through the sparse small trees and bushes.

He could also hear what sounded like sparring in the distance, thuds and voices that were too regular to be a real fight, so he drifted that way curiously.

What he found was a clearing in the forest, containing a group of boys of varying ages, a few looking almost as old as the boy who’d led them yesterday, but mostly much younger. Some were playing at the edges of the clearing, while two groups were on the other side engaged in martial arts training using sticks. A young monk was showing one group what seemed to be basic movement and the other group were watching two boys sparring, supervised by an older monk leaning on a walking stick.

As Goku watched, one of them turned to look at him, and got smacked in the side of the head by his opponent for his distraction.

As more heads turned his way, he wondered if he should wave and sneak away or go closer.

“Eh, what is it?” Goku heard the older monk ask, and then to a soft reply from one of the boys “youkai, what youkai?”

He was squinting at Goku like he couldn’t quite make him out, and then grinned widely before gesturing for him to come closer.

As Goku bounded closer, some of the children shifted away, looking spooked and glancing between him and the old monk, who was currently digging in his sleeves. He held up a hand as Goku approached, before going: “Aha!”

He pulled out a pair of thick spectacles that gave him an owlish appearance as he set them on his face to peer at Goku.

“Well then, what’s your name young man?” he asked.

“Son Goku, I just got here last night,” Goku replied, smiling. The old man had deep laugh lines, like that friendly grin from before was his usual expression. He almost reminded Goku of Gojyo, if he was a few decades older and bald.

The old monk nodded, while the children got, if possible, even more wide-eyed.

“He’s a _youkai_?” One whispered to another and got hushed and elbowed in the ribs.

“One of your illustrious visitors, as I suspected,” the monk commented. “Boys, want to show your skills to someone who really knows how it’s done?”

Most of the kids shuffled back, looking shy, while one older boy immediately raised a hand, his chin set in determination.

“Right, Cheng and… Xun, you’re about on the same level,” the old monk instructed.

As the boys shuffled into place, the monk pushed his glasses on top of his bald head and stomped his feet on the ground.

“Bit of a chill this morning, there’ll be snow in a week or two, I bet. Comes early here in the mountains… oh, did I introduce myself? Doutaku, in case I didn’t.”

Goku grinned.

“Nice to meet ya.”

“Well then, you two ready?” Doutaku asked, and the boys nodded.

Goku ended up staying at the clearing for rest of the training time. Once the braver kids, led by Cheng, got over their initial awe, they demanded that he show them the nyoibou and then wanted him to demonstrate some moves. Before he knew it, Doutaku was clearing his throat and saying it was time for lunch, at which point Goku became suddenly aware that he was starving.

Doutaku snickered over the loud growl from Goku’s stomach and suggested he come eat with them, which Goku was more than fine with.

As they were leaving, though, he got a prickling feeling of being Watched, the one he used to get right before a youkai attack.

He glanced around, automatically readying himself to manifest nyoibou, but a closer scrutiny there was nothing amiss, except… ah, it was one of the kids.

Goku though he might have noticed him hanging back from the others, before, but he’d been distracted by the other children.

The boy was looking at him, with an unsettlingly fixed, set stare, his face expressionless.

He was short and thin, at most ten, Goku estimated, and hardly a threat. It was just something about the look on his face that felt off.

Well, the kid might not like youkai, it wasn’t the first time he’d gotten that look since returning from India.

“The kids here, they from the city?” he asked Doutaku on the way towards the communal dining room. “I know Kei’un had a lot from the nearest town or the farms, especially when there was no work for them.”

“Some of them,” the monk replied slowly. “Others came here as young novices.” He leaned closer to add, quietly. “We got a lot of them during the bad time, the parents figured they’d be safer here I reckon, or they hoped to garner some protection. And some of the kids are orphans.”

“Right,” Goku said, sighing.

He wondered how long that youkai monk, Taian, had been at the monastery. If he had any family left outside.

Lunch was simple, but at least there was enough for seconds, even with all the monks and children.

Cheng sat himself on the other side of the long table, and then commenced to interrogate Goku about the journey, sometimes with whispered suggestion from the others.

“—and then she got hit in the head by some falling masonry, or so I was told,” Goku was saying, when he looked up and saw Shun standing in the doorway.

“Hi Shun!” Goku exclaimed, and the boy shuffled in.

“Your companions were looking for you?” Shun said. “Ah, a while ago? I couldn’t find you but then I heard you were here… um.”

Goku got up and dusted himself off, while the kids made disappointed faces.

“I’ll tell the rest of it another time,” he told them, and was met by a cheer.

When he returned to the rooms they were staying at, though, only Gojyo was there, snoring with an ancient magazine steepled over his face. Huamei was lying on her stomach on a thick blanket next to him, wearing an oversized beanie and seeming entranced by a paper plane folded out of glossy newsprint. There were three of them scattered on the blanket around her, all in various stages of chewed-up-ness.

She lifted her head dramatically as Goku entered, and then made a bubbling screech and sort of rocked in place, her hands curling in a grabbing motion. Her fingers were stained with the newsprint ink, and her mouth likewise.

Gojyo started at the cry, and then lifted the magazine from his face, looking fuzzy.

“Whassat?” he mumbled before waking up properly. “Oh hey, you’re back.”

“Where’re the others?” Goku asked, and Gojyo looked around himself too.

“Huh. Well, Hakkai left on some sightseeing tour with a monk, dunno where his highness is, was here when I last looked.”

“Shun said you wanted to talk to me?” Goku said, plopping down on the blanket.

Huamei rolled over and reached out towards him, so he gave her one of his fingers to grasp and make happy noises over. She had tiny, sharp claws, like a kitten.

“Yeah, uh, apparently there is a youkai orphanage on this mountain, or the neighbouring one. Somewhere close by anyway.” Gojyo said and yawned.

“They’d take her in?” Goku asked, not sure if he was relieved or… something. None of them really knew anything about babies or children, so it would make sense, right?

Gojyo shrugged.

“Dunno. Should go take a look, at least. Probably tomorrow, especially now Sanzo’s disappeared somewhere too.”

“I guess,” Goku agreed.

Huamei rolled over, grabbed one of the paper planes and rolled over on her back again before stuffing it in her mouth, her eyes squinting up in contentment.

Gojyo made a face.

“Should she be eating that?” he asked, and Goku shrugged in reply. She seemed to be ok.

He sighed and tapped a foot against the floor he was lying on. Being with the kids had been a good distraction, but now he was feeling restless again.

“I’ll go out again,” he said after a moment.

It was another aimless walk, although perhaps, without really thinking about it, he let himself follow the pull of his inner Sanzo-compass, because that was where he ended up.

He heard Sanzo’s voice before he saw him, the sound of it easy to pick out among the myriad other sounds of the compound, and as Goku followed it he found the small garden, nestled in between two narrow buildings built at an angle around it.

There were several small, gnarled fruit trees growing in it, mostly bare, though a few still bore clusters of small orange apricots.

Chang’an had several gardens, with decorative ponds populated by spotted carp, streams crossed by curving bridges and small temples hidden in groves. When Goku was younger he was repeatedly told not to disturb the politicians or nobles who visited the gardens sometimes.

This garden was plain and utilitarian by comparison, a simple path of flat stones curving through the trees the only decoration. At the far end, there was an open-walled roofed structure and a low wall to guard the edge of the garden, and behind it the open sky.

Sanzo and abbot Seiran were sitting on a curved bench under the roof, Sanzo’s back towards Goku and his form almost completely obstructed by the tree branches. The abbot beside him was visible in profile, his dark brown robes a contrast to Sanzo’s white.

One of the scriptures was open in Seiran’s lap, his one hand moving over the flowing text as if following it, his fingers not quite touching the surface.

As Goku watched, he handed it back and Sanzo laid it over his shoulders again.

Something was keeping him quiet, a feeling like there was something he shouldn’t interrupt.

Sanzo’s hand had settled on the scripture after smoothing it down, laying over his heart.

“Is the resonance causing trouble?” Seiran asked, presumably continuing a conversation they had been having.

“No,” Sanzo replied, his voice clipped. He was quiet for a while and then added, as if reluctant:

“Although it is taking getting used to.”

“I only know of them in the abstract, of course, but I’m not surprised. You’ve only carried the one for a long time, after all,” Seiran commented mildly.

“You still carry on the old traditions, despite the sutra not having been here in nearly a generation,” Sanzo said, abrupt as usual.

Seiran laughed, drily.

“Yes, I imagine we might be the last left… apart from, as I know now, Sharaku Sanzo’s stronghold. It would be good to establish contact with them, in the future,” he pondered.

“Yes,” Sanzo replied, sounding impatient.

Abbot Seiran tilted his head, his expression non-committal.

“It concerns you, the succession?” he asked.

“I’d be a fool not to be prepared for anything,” Sanzo replied, his voice dry. 

“Certainly,” Seiran agreed, “But the training to become a Sanzo is somewhat different from the one we give to—”

“Abbot Seiran,” Sanzo interrupted him, sounding tired. “I inherited the Maten at 13, I was hardly given the kind of training you described earlier either. At the very least, you’re more qualified than I am to hold the Seiten.”

Seiran shook his head.

“Qualified, perhaps, but it is not for me, I realized that many years ago,” he said, the words final, as if they had been arguing about it already. “Besides, I’ve no doubt you’ll outlive me, easily,” he added softly.

Sanzo didn’t reply.

Goku stood still as if he’d turned to stone, the crisp wind he’d barely noticed before suddenly feeling like it cut him to the bone.

A prick of pain made him look down. His claws had dug into his palms where his hands were fisted, and blood dripped slowly onto the stone. A growl rose from his chest, like the rumble of an earthquake, and he absently lifted one hand to it, leaving a smear of blood on his shirt.

When he looked up, he saw Sanzo, looking right at him with an expression Goku couldn’t read.

He’d stood up, and there was something aggressive in his stance, as he were readying himself for a fight.

Goku didn’t want him to look at him like that, and yet something in him was stretching, waking to the challenge…

He turned on his heel and ran, ignoring the shout behind him.

Monks scattered from his way, their faces going pale at whatever they saw, but Goku ignored them. His senses were even sharper now, in a way that made him aware of _everything_ ; the cold smell of snow on the wind, the trees on the mountain slowing down for winter, the rabbiting heartbeat of the monk stepping out of his way.

He might have been overwhelmed if he’d been thinking about it, but he was focused on one particular heartbeat, one particular person smelling of green growth and with chi like a strictly tended garden.

“Hakkai!” Goku shouted, and Hakkai looked up from the scroll he’d been studying, his face smoothing out of all expression and his back going straight, almost wary.

He got up, slowly, hands held open low at his sides.

That was not a defenceless posture, for him.

“Goku,” Hakkai said noncommittally as the monk with him looked between him and Goku worriedly. “Sir Toin, thank you, but perhaps we may continue this study another time?” he said to the side without breaking eye contact with Goku, and the monk nodded before standing and walking out of the room, rather quickly.

Goku barely noted his exit.

“Now, what is it Goku?” Hakkai asked, his voice tense under the gentle tone.

“Is there something you haven’t told me, about Sanzo?” Goku asked, the words coming out nearly at a snarl.

Hakkai blinked.

“What? No. Why would you think that?”

Goku stared at him, but the surprise was genuine, as far as he could tell. So it wasn’t that…

He breathed in, sharply like he’d been holding his breath, and then slumped.

“I…” he muttered, scratching at an itching scab on his palm.

“Goku,” Hakkai said, still in that irritatingly cautious tone. “Are you feeling quite alright?”

“Huh, what? I’m fine?”

Hakkai laughed, in that especially fake way.

“It’s only, you were growling before. I’d say you might have frightened librarian Toin.”

Goku blinked. Had he? Looking back, he might have.

Hakkai was still standing there, still. He smelled of fear. No, worry, there was a subtle difference.

Goku took in a deep breath. He was overreacting. What was he even so angry over?

“Sorry, Hakkai,” he said, turning to pace the room to get rid of some of the energy that still crackled along his nerves. “I wasn’t… I just heard Sanzo say something and—It wasn’t anything I guess, I just freaked out.”

“Really?” Hakkai asked. “Are you sure?”

Goku realized in a flash why he looked so worried. The limiter. That they didn’t know why he wasn’t Seiten Taisei now despite looking like him. Unthinkingly, his hand rose to his bare forehead, still oddly light after all these months.

He stopped so he could meet Hakkai’s eyes, and smiled ruefully.

“I’m sure,” Goku hastened to assure him. “I just lost my temper, but I wasn’t gonna attack anyone or anything.”

He hadn’t been, right?

Hakkai slumped too, sitting down heavily at the table with its abandoned open scroll.

“Oh thank heavens,” he said, putting his head in his hand.

Goku shifted in place, feeling embarrassed and guilty for worrying him, now that the haze of anger had left him.

After a moment, Hakkai lifted his head and gave him a stern look.

“In the future, try to control yourself, we don’t want to get thrown out of here because you’re stalking around looking like you plan to tear someone’s head off.”

“Oy, I’ve never done that… have I?” he asked, suddenly uncertain.

Hakkai waved it off, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Not as far as I can recall. But really, what was it?”

 Goku struggled to explain it. It wasn’t anything Sanzo had said, exactly…

“He’s looking for someone to inherit the sutras,” Goku said.

Hakkai nodded.

“I’m not… surprised,” he said slowly. “But, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, does it?”

He didn’t really believe that and they both knew it.

“He never cared before!” Goku said. “And I know there was the mission but… he didn’t care before that either,” he muttered, suddenly less certain.

Hakkai sighed.

“This… the final battle, I suppose it reminded all of us that our lives are finite,” Hakkai said softly. “Besides, I think Sanzo has been on a mission far longer that before the Three Aspect sent us to India.”

Goku couldn’t argue with that, but there was still a heavy feeling in his chest.

“There’s something wrong with him,” he said aloud, the words welling out like blood from a wound. “Not just the injuries.”

As if they weren’t bad enough.

A hand settled on his shoulder. Hakkai.

“He needs to rest, I think,” Hakkai said, his voice gone quiet as if he was worried they might be overheard, like it was a secret.

When Goku looked up, he wasn’t smiling, and it was a relief of sorts.

He nodded, smiling himself.

“Yeah!” he agreed, and now Hakkai did smile, tentative and true.

Ultimately, Goku thought inwardly, nothing could kill Sanzo unless he let it. He hadn’t, so far. Why would that change now? Except, he’d achieved what he’d set out to do, hadn’t he? Despite the niggling doubt, he felt calmer with Hakkai’s hand on his shoulder. Right up to when there were quick footsteps in the hallway, and he knew who it was even before he turned.

Sanzo, out of breath, angry and beneath that, worried. At least he was until he saw the two of them and his eyes narrowed.

“Goku,” he said, and you could have cut diamonds with that tone. “What the hell was that?”

He didn’t raise his voice, and it just underlined how beyond furious he was. Goku winced.

“Now, Sanzo—” Hakkai began, and got a blistering glare for his efforts.

“Get out,” Sanzo snapped.

Hakkai’s eyebrows rose, and then he glanced at Goku questioningly.

“It’s fine,” Goku told him, aloud.

There was a shivery feeling going up and down his spine, combining dread and anticipation. Part of him knew that arguing with Sanzo was a bad idea, but most of him just didn’t care.

Hakkai gave him a long look, before shaking his head minutely.

“Very well, try not to cause too much damage,” he said disapprovingly.

Sanzo didn’t even look at him as he walked out, and Goku was only peripherally paying attention either.

He wanted to move, barely able to hold himself from pacing the room again.

“So, what?” he asked.

It came out challenging, and he saw the way Sanzo’s eyes flashed in reply.

“Why did you run right now?” Sanzo asked. “Or last night, for that matter?”

He was looking at Goku like he was trying to see into his head, and it really shouldn’t have made him as happy as it did, still in that bubbly right-before-a-good-fight mode.

The only problem was that he couldn’t find the words to explain, not without sounding like an idiot. Not to Sanzo, who would never in a hundred years admit to weakness of any kind…

Goku bit his lip, the frustration mounting in him again.

“You know what you looked like?” Sanzo asked, taking a step closer, eyes burning with cold fire. “You… don’t think I can’t still put the limiter on you, even if it kills me!” he hissed.

Everything moved fast for a short moment, and then Goku found he’d grabbed Sanzo by the front of his robe and pressed him into the wall, and he was still _sneering_ at him, and he was furious.

“Don’t!” he shouted, no longer caring what he sounded like. “That’s the last thing I want!”

“Then who the fuck asked me to kill you if I had to? You did!” Sanzo told him, the words utterly cold, his eyes hard as amethysts. “The Sage was dangerous long before the minus wave, I doubt that even touched him… or did it, Goku? Where’s he now?”

Goku actually flinched, almost taking a step back.

“He’s…”

“You don’t even know, do you!” Sanzo thundered, his voice hoarse as it always was these days. “What happens when you get angry, really angry?”

He was smiling as he said it, in a way that reminded Goku unpleasantly of that time in the desert, with the scorpion demon… but not quite, he realized in a flash of clarity. Sanzo was goading him, deliberately pushing him towards breaking point to see what would happen. Because he was scared, and probably angry about it.

“Stop,” he whispered, suddenly inexplicably sad. “I don’t know what happened exactly but we’re… in agreement now?”

Sanzo looked dubious.

“He speaks to you?” he said disbelievingly.

“No! But… sometimes I think I can feel him? And he doesn’t feel as… trapped anymore? Most of the time. I can’t explain it,” he finished, frustrated.

Sanzo let out a breath and seemed to slump just slightly, and it made Goku realize he was still holding him trapped against himself and the wall.

He flushed and let go quickly, taking a step back.

Sanzo was still giving him a weighing look, but now he was leaning back against the wall and his eyes were hooded. He almost looked debauched like that, and Goku flushed a deeper red. He really didn’t need thoughts like that on top of the adrenaline from earlier.

Sanzo laughed, a sharp bark of sound.

“Trapped,” he repeated, pushing away from the wall. “Is that what’s happening now?”

Goku stared at him. Was it? Why…

Because, he thought, he felt like Sanzo might be going somewhere he couldn’t follow. Like there was nothing he could do to help.

He closed his eyes.

“Because I was worried for you,” he said frankly, opening his eyes again to see Sanzo’s reaction.

There wasn’t much of one. Goku wasn’t even sure if he looked surprised or like he’d already expected something like that. Mostly he looked neutral, as he rarely did.

“I see,” Sanzo said.

A silence stretched out between them, and then he added in a somewhat irate tone:

“If you wanted consolation, you asked the wrong person.”

Goku laughed, looking away from him for the first time since they started this conversation.

“I know,” he said, feeling tired. “I didn’t say it for that.”

Why would Sanzo even think that?

“Look, I’ll be fine. I won’t lose control suddenly or anything, it’s not like that.”’

“And what happens if I die?”

The question came like a shot, right to the heart of the issue, the only kind of mercy Sanzo would know.

Goku thought about it for a while.

“Then I go on, I suppose,” he said slowly, even though just saying it hurt.

 _And then I’d find him again_ , _whoever he becomes,_ he promised silently, and there was an odd echo of wry amusement to the thought.

Sanzo was watching him again, his expression grim, and then he nodded and stepped forward.

“You’d better,” he said, not softly, but there was light in his eyes again, where they glinted beneath his pale eyelashes, each one visible this close.

Goku felt breathless with the proximity, how they were close enough that if he just raised his face and moved a little closer they could—

Sanzo huffed out a breath, the tiny gust of it brushing warm against Goku’s face, and then moved away.

He was left standing there feeling too many things at once, his legs rubbery underneath him. By the time he’d recovered somewhat, Sanzo had drifted over to the table, looking idly at the scroll Hakkai had left open.

“Sanzo?” Goku said, searchingly, not sure what he was asking.

“What?” Sanzo asked him, and Goku realized he hadn’t been ready for his undivided attention again, not so soon.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, and Sanzo’s gaze went back to the manuscript. He was smiling a little, a lopsided but genuinely amused one, that made Goku uncomfortably aware that he was still flushed and had had an erection since they were still shouting at each other.

He didn’t even know if he was thankful Sanzo hadn’t commented on that, if he’d noticed. He probably had, Goku figured.

“I should… I should go,” he managed to say, uncomfortably aware that maybe Sanzo was laughing at him on the inside, and maybe that was the best he could expect out of the situation.

Put like that it was pretty depressing, but he’d never had any illusions about that when it came to Sanzo, had he?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will they kiss before this story ends? I'm curious too. At least with that last scene written I only have rereading and deciding how the main plot ends to do. Thanks for the kudos, Avierra and Kirathaune! ,=3=;v


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanzo is conspicuously absent and Huamei's future is discussed.

At dinner, Hakkai kept shooting these subtle, searching looks between Goku and Sanzo. Goku pretended he didn’t notice, because he really didn’t want to talk about any of it with him. Not now, anyway.

He had trouble falling asleep that night, because every time he’d close his eyes he’d see that amused smile of Sanzo’s, and wonder what he was thinking. He kept rolling about in bed, unable to find a good position to sleep in, his skin feeling itchy and too tight.

Finally, he closed his eyes determinately and told himself he was too old for this, that he’d gotten over this a long time ago. Sanzo had never shown any indication he was interested in men, women or Goku in particular, and if he hadn’t said anything today…

Goku slumped in bed, swallowing around the lump in his throat.

That was fine. It really was. He’d known it a long time.

He curled up around his pillow, letting the warm weight of the thoughts press him down into the mattress. Sanzo trusted him. He cared about him, even if most people might not see it. How many people could say that? Hakkai and Gojyo, but even they hadn’t gotten to spend as much time with him, Goku thought pettily. Beside all that, the things that would never happen were _nothing_.

He smiled, finally feeling sleepy despite the heaviness still lingering in his chest.

*

He dreamed of being somewhere high up where the sun fell softly on his skin, the wind ruffling his hair playfully. The air smelled of flowers. He reached out to pluck out a ripe fruit, red and yellow, and bit into the flesh, the juice running down his tongue.

Suddenly, the scene was shattered by an unearthly screeching sound, and Goku started awake, his weapon manifesting in readiness to attack.

As it turned out, it was just Huamei, who apparently didn’t always sleep through the night after all.

Hakkai, in his pyjamas and his hair disarrayed, gave her a quick check, Huamei still whining lowly like she was ready to start crying anytime.

Then he looked up to where Gojyo and Goku were hovering worriedly.

Hakkai shook his head, and then winced as Huamei’s whining crescendoed into a shriller cry once more.

“There’s… nothing wrong with her. I think,” he said over her screaming.

None of them got much sleep that night.

They found after some trial and error that she calmed down when bounced lightly and spoken to in a cheerful voice.

The actual words didn’t seem to matter. They made Hakkai stop narrating an autopsy manual anyway because him saying that to a baby with _that_ smile was just too much. Why did he even know all of that by heart?

 

The problem was if you stopped bouncing and talking to her, she quickly got upset again.

She only fell asleep properly just as the sky was starting to turn grey, right before dawn, and they all staggered off to bed to catch some sleep.

Goku woke again a few hours later, still feeling sluggish but also ravenous.

Was that the smell of food? Lunch, probably. Also, ugh, Huamei needing a change. Could they ask one of the monks to do that? Surely some of them had younger siblings or something… she probably needed a bath too at that.

He stomped downstairs to what had already become their dining room. As he stepped in, Hakkai and Gojyo looked up from a hushed conversation they’d been having. They both looked even more tired than Goku felt.

Huamei was sitting in Gojyo’s lap, a mostly empty bowl of something mashed (beef and carrot, Goku’s nose told him) set on the table next to them. She was currently reaching furtively towards the spoon in the bowl.

Sanzo wasn’t there.

He still hadn’t appeared by the time they’d finished eating breakfast. Hakkai had gone to check his room earlier, but it was empty, and he’d returned with a slight frown.

If Goku felt for it, he could tell Sanzo wasn’t in any danger, if anything he was slightly bored at that moment. And really, he couldn’t have had this weird Sanzo-sense during the journey, when it really would have been useful?

He woke out of his thoughts as Gojyo let out a startled yell and even Hakkai made a surprised noise. Huamei had managed to strike the spoon and catapult the food in the bowl all over the three of them, and was now looking wildly around her as if searching for the source of the attack.

Then she sniffled and began to cry.

“Oh shit, not again…” Gojyo muttered, and began to bounce her while babbling some nonsense with a slightly desperate tone. Huamei looked dubious but eventually settled again, curling against his chest.

After they’d eaten, Huamei got a wash with the help of a bowl of warm water and a sponge Hakkai had magicked from somewhere. She seemed to love it, especially slamming her hand into the bowl and splashing the water all around.

Hakkai was pretty peeved, though he tried not to show it, since he’d made the mistake of changing out of his mash-spattered clothes before.

Gojyo laughed, in that way people do when they are overtired and everything is very funny, and got a death-glare that made him choke on air.

Later when Huamei was dried and dressed and rolling about on her blanket, still delighted with her by now rather disfigured paper planes, Hakkai came down in his third clean shirt. He glanced through the window and frowned at the sun just barely visible through heavy clouds driven across the sky.

“If we want to visit the orphanage today, we need to leave now,” he said. “I suppose Sanzo wasn’t planning to come with us,” he added, voice just slightly irritated.

Gojyo sighed and rolled up the old newspaper he’d been reading, before looking towards Huamei.

“I guess we could go tomorrow too?” he suggested, and Hakkai’s frown deepened.

“Gojyo,” he said, and something about the tone made Gojyo’s mouth turn downwards. “I think it’s best we go sooner rather than later.”

“Before we get too attached, right,” Gojyo said absently, before picking Huamei off the blanket to put her in the basket.

Her face grew pinched, so he quickly distracted her by moving his hand quickly over the basket, Huamei’s eyes crossing as she tried to grab the moving object.

Gojyo chuckled.

“You can go keep some other poor bastards up all night, eh?” he said ruefully.

*

There was a rough path starting near the front gates, off to the side of the stairs they’d took on the way there and almost hidden by thick bushes. The other path wound along the mountainside and lead to a hanging bridge over a wide gap, after which the path continued on the other side.

Here the land was flatter, sloping gently upwards towards a peak off in the northeast. It was more forested than the part where Shuilian was built, mostly old pines that rose up like reddish-brown pillars, their gnarly branches and deep green needles forming a loose canopy overhead.

The other trees had already shed their leaves, leaving rough circles of yellow and brown around the bare trunks.

Piles of rocks and hillocks of stone stuck out through the thick moss and underbrush like islands in a sea of greenery, even this late in autumn. The path they followed winded through the forest, coated in dead needles.

Here and there was evidence that there was someone living nearby, branches broken or cut with a tool, narrower paths winding out from the main one. Goku even spotted an inexpertly hidden rabbit trap, set up too close to the path.

After they’d walked about half an hour, the landscape growing rockier as they ascended, they arrived at a house built at the base of where the mountain truly grew steep and rocky.

It was just a single ramshackle building, visible holes in the plank roof, plaster on the walls mostly gone and green with damp where any was left. The smaller building at the side was leaning dangerously, close to collapsing.

Goku could see pale faces peering through the window next to the front porch, but most of his attention was caught by the figure standing in front of the same porch.

“Another youkai monk, huh?” Gojyo muttered to Hakkai, who shook his head.

“That’s the venerable Miao Run, a nun,” he explained under his breath, and Gojyo’s eyes went round.

“That’s a woman?!” he exclaimed.

Hakkai sighed.

Miao Run had a brown, wrinkled face and her head was shaved to a stubble, showing her tapered ears clearly. Even the faded blue robes she wore looked about the same as a monk’s. She was leaning on a spear, with the tell-tale appearance of a spirit-weapon, though the metal of the head was blackened and dull looking.

“What do you want?” she asked, voice sharp.

They glanced at each other, and then Hakkai stepped forward, smiling politely.

“I’m Cho Hakkai, and my friends are Sha Gojyo and Son Goku,” he began.

“I’ve heard of you,” the nun interrupted him, the frown on her face deepening.

Her dark eyes flickered to the basket Goku was carrying, and her lips thinned, before her attention turned back to Hakkai.

“I see,” Hakkai replied mildly. “While travelling to visit the Shuilian monastery with Genjo Sanzo, we encountered a small youkai village that had been, ah, attacked. We found this one surviving child there.”

“We’ve been calling her Huamei?” Goku offered, trying not to feel cowed by the nun. She must have been truly formidable once to still have this sort of presence now.

Miao Run leaned back, some indefinable aggression seeming to leech out from her, though her countenance was still stern. She shook her head.

“I see,” she said, giving all of them a piercing look-over.

“The three of you are all youkai, huh? Can’t say I believed that fool Doutaku when he wrote that…” she shook her head again, before half-turning towards the house.

“We’re coming in!” she shouted, and the faces in the window disappeared, childish voices and running footsteps sounding on the inside of the building.

“Come in, but don’t expect much hospitality, we’re living on meagre resources,” Miao Run told them, her voice gruff.

The front door was opened by a lanky youkai boy, who shuffled aside as they stepped in, his face closed and hard to read. A small group of youkai children was crowded in the doorway out of the small entry room, their eyes wide and ranging from curious to scared and surly. Most of them looked underfed.

A little girl clutching a battered doll reminded Goku of something, and then he realized she had a similar flat stare as that one boy at the monastery the day before.

Inside, it smelled of rot, damp wood and too many bodies in too small a space.

the room they were led to was cramped and dark, the only light coming from the tiny glassless window set in the wall. On one end was a simple altar, on which sat a figurine of a plump faced person in flowing robes, the gleaming white porcelain looking ghostly in the dark nook.

Miao Run gestured towards a small table with five sit cushions arranged around it, and then asked one of the hovering children to get a pot of tea.

When it arrived, it was thin, barely more than water with a slight flavour of tea.

The girl who brought it looked about eight years old, her dark hair braided. She put the pot down and then hesitated, glancing at the nun.

“Thank you Xiu, that’ll be all,” she told her, voice matter of fact.

The girl nodded wordlessly and backed out. There was a sense of a hush around them, a watchful silence that made Goku twitchy. The children were nervous about strangers in the house, he guessed, strangers that might be a threat.

Goku wondered suddenly if they had heard stories of them too, and what they might think in that case.

He looked towards her as Miao Run spoke:

“How old is the child?” she asked.

“Well, we don’t know exactly, of course, but I’d say under a year? I’ve trained myself for healing, but I’ve barely worked on children, and ah, I’m even less familiar with youkai children,” Hakkai explained, only hesitating slightly.

Miao Run’s mouth twisted.

“I’d imagine so,” she said dryly, and Goku could see Hakkai’s back go straight and his expression shutter. Miao Run, if she saw the same, didn’t react.

“May I see her?” she asked instead.

Without waiting, she drew Huamei’s basket closer and unwrapped the blankets around her, lifting the girl with practiced movements.

Huamei frowned, her face twisting, possibly at the change in temperature, but then she waved her arms and burbled.

“Can she sit up yet? crawl? Did she seem afraid of strange faces?” Miao Run asked.

“Nah,” Gojyo replied shortly. “And not as far as we could tell…”

“Hm,” Miao Run said, her face still set in a contemplative frown. “Youkai children usually develop a bit faster than humans do, but it’s individual. She might be anything from four months to eight. Should still be nursing, in either case, though she would survive without.”

“Yeah well, I don’t suppose you can arrange that,” Gojyo said, sounding uncomfortable.

Miao Run shrugged.

“I have contacts around the area,” she said, and didn’t elaborate. “In fact, as you can see this is not the best place for a child this small, I’d be looking to foster her out if possible in any case. But I suppose that’ll be my problem now,” she added primly.

“Ah, we do apologise for the trouble,” Hakkai muttered, his face still set.

“Look, if you don’t want the kid just say so,” Gojyo said, glaring at the old nun. “We don’t have to leave her here. Right?”

The last was aimed at the two of them.

Hakkai hesitated, and then cleared his throat.

“Well, yes. We came here to see if it might be a good option, but given the situation…” he trailed off meaningfully.

Miao Run gave all three of them a narrow-eyed look. Then she sat back, Huamei set at the crook of her arm.

“I started this orphanage when the minus wave began,” she said in an even voice. “I had the fortune to have a mind trained and old enough to survive the initial burst, and to be able to craft limiters. Many were not so lucky. We used to almost have true peace here before that, we had old youkai families with high standing in society.”

She put the cup down, staring at the rippling surface.

“They’re gone now.” She said quietly. “Most of these children have seen things no one should have to see. And they’re far from safe. Children shouldn’t wear limiters for an extended period, it interferes with their development. And that…” her lips thinned again.

“Too many humans think they are justified to do to us what was done to them during the minus wave. A life lived in hiding is hardly one at all.”

Hakkai sat still and quiet, but Gojyo leaned forward.

“We get that!” he said, loud in the hushed air of the house. “What’s it got to do with Huamei.”

Miao Run smiled, a not particularly pleasant smile.

“If you plan to take her on, that’s the future you’ll be living with,” she said flatly.

“Ah, yes,” Hakkai said, is voice almost as flat. “And we have hardly lived among youkai…” He hesitated and glanced at Gojyo who shook his head, mouth turned downwards.

“And yet, you’re unwilling to leave her here?” Miao Run asked, her eyebrows arched superciliously. It sounded like a challenge.

Hakkai smiled at her frostily.

“I grew up in an orphanage myself, madam. It was run by Christian nuns, and I suppose they had enough for all of us, materially, and were kind enough, for the most part. It’s still not a childhood I would wish to relive.”

Miao Run nodded, her expression growing just a shade less stern.

“Very well, if you wish to keep her I won’t stop you, or imagine I could if I wanted to. I can still send inquiries through my contacts and see if anyone would be willing to take her… or at least provide aid. At the least, if you do keep her, you should have Zhu Yan take a look at her. She is an old midwife who still lives in the area. You’ll have to be discreet in contacting her, obviously.”

“Yes… thank you,” Hakkai replied, seeming taken aback. “Obviously it will be a big decision. And if a better alternative presents itself, well.”

“Indeed,” Miao Run agreed.

Soon after Hakkai thanked her and said they needed to get going to be home before dark. Goku could sense the collective relief as they left in the kids peering through the door when they stood in front on the house saying goodbyes to Miao Run. Some braver ones even came out to the yard to gaggle at them.

Before they left, Gojyo turned to her and blurted out:

“You know, dunno how long we’ll be staying here, but I could come over someday and help fix some of those holes in the roof.”

Miao Run’s eyebrows rose.

“I would certainly not protest,” she said.

The trek back was as uneventful as the one to the orphanage. The heavy clouds from before had by then covered the sky in an uniform greyish white, and when the sun set behind them it got dark quickly. Luckily, they arrived at the monastery before night truly fell.

The front gates were still open, and a lone figure in white stood to the side of them, his face lighted by the glow of a cigarette.

“You came back with her, then?” Sanzo commented neutrally, after barely glancing at the basket.

Gojyo was the first to reply, his tone daring Sanzo to make an issue out of it.

“Yeah, we did, it was no place for a kid as small as her.”

Sanzo just nodded, looking almost contemplative, before turning to walk through the door.

“I thought so,” he said cryptically.

“Huh,” Gojyo said. “What was that about?”

Hakkai laughed.

“Well, I wouldn’t dare to guess,” he said and ignored Gojyo’s narrow look at him. “I’m sure it’s high time for us to get some dinner, don’t you think?”

“Yes!” Goku agreed emphatically, and even Gojyo gave up the line of inquiry in lieu of hurrying forward.

As distracted as he was at the thought of dinner, as they were crossing the second courtyard, Goku got a prickling feeling of being watched. He turned, and a small figure moved behind a pillar, but he could still see the eyes that seemed too big in a pale face, even in the settling gloom of the evening.

It was the boy whose name he still didn’t know from the day before, the one who’d been staring at him. Why was he even here, with no other children around?

Well, he might have had a task, bringing something to the guard monk at the gates. Or he’d followed Sanzo, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d gained an admirer.  

Goku was hungry, so he shook it off as insignificant and hurried after the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, there is a bit of a timeskip and it's basically the last one, barring an epilogue and maybe some other scenes in this verse if I ever write them.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Huamei's nurse and Sanzo is unnecessarily mean to Gojyo (more news at eleven).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was all one chapter originally but 1) It seemed like ot might as well be two? and 2) It took me too long to get to editing and I need to sleep now.  
> However, if you want to avoid a cliffhanger, I'd advice to read it later.

Goku woke slowly, blinking up at the by now familiar pattern of the roof beams above. His head felt heavy with interrupted sleep, and his neck was bent back at an awkward angle, leaning on something hard… ah, that was the window sill.

He’d fallen asleep sitting up in bed while trying to get Huamei to stop crying. She’d calmed up a bit in the last month and half, sometimes even sleeping through the night, but last night hadn’t been one of them.

A soft snuffling snore told him that Huamei was still asleep, and as he opened one eye to check, he could see her round face squashed against the front of his shirt, a puddle of drool leaving a damp spot on it.

He sighed, but he’d gotten used to worse.

Goku wriggled a bit so the windowsill dug less into his neck and let his eyes close again. Even with them closed, he could tell it was still early, and he had nothing particular in the morning anyway.

He’d promised to help in training the novices, but their martial arts were in the afternoon… Joshin and the other younger monks had theirs in the early morning, and it’d have been nice to join them too, but not when it was his turn to watch Huamei.

On the floor above, he could hear the floorboards creaking softly. Probably Hakkai going about putting the room in order.

After several nights of Huamei barely letting any of them sleep, Gojyo had just up and gone to sleep on the floor above, exclaiming he’d rather sleep on a bare floor than listen to a second more of screaming when it wasn’t even his night to look after Huamei.

He’d returned in the morning covered in dust and sneezing, but still looking enviably rested. Soon enough Hakkai’s things, as well as most of the furniture, had migrated to the floor above and Goku had this floor all to himself.

The floor below, he could hear talking, Gojyo’s and a soft female voice.

Ah, Liu An must have arrived early, Huamei would be pleased. He should see about getting up soon too, Goku thought drowsily, but his eyelids still felt heavy, and Huamei’s breathing was set in the even snuffles of sleep. No point waking her before she was ready.

The air in the room was cold, and he was glad he’d thought to wrap a thick blanket around himself and Huamei before he fell asleep.

Outside the window beyond the winter screen, the world was hushed with the snow that had fallen a few weeks ago, heavier here than in the surrounding lowlands.

Goku smiled, his eyes still closed, as he remembered the snow war after the first big snowfall. It had raged through the central courtyards, improvised camps forming and breaking as new people joined in or switched sides.

At one point, he, Shun, Cheng and some other boys had been hiding in an empty fountain from a barrage of snowballs from Gojyo and Joshin, trying to get together their own arsenal.

Goku chuckled softly as he thought of Gojyo’s face when he’d realized he’d accidentally hit Hakkai with a stray snowball. Once Hakkai had joined their side, Gojyo’s camp had been ruthlessly defeated in short order.

Well, at least it hadn’t been Sanzo, he might have actually returned fire with bullets. As it was, the closest he’d gotten to the war had been that one snowball that went through the abbot’s window, and which had essentially marked the end of it. More or less.

There had been Words at the assembly that evening, and extra tough training for everyone for a few days, but the consensus had been that it was worth it.

“It’s practically a tradition,” Joshin had explained to Goku later during their shared training. “We always have at least one snow fight every winter, if there’s enough snow.”

Taian, training with two wooden swords nearby, snorted rudely.

“You know it’s true,” Joshin sing-songed, ignoring the glower from the youkai monk.

Goku was pretty sure they were friends, or at least had known each other a long time. For all that Taian mostly seemed irritated at the other monk, they still seemed to be often found near each other.

One evening when Goku had felt restless, he’d gone to the training grounds to work it off, but found them already occupied by Taian, using not his usual training weapons but rather a pair of long metal hooks, edged like a sword and with a crescent curving over the handhold.

He’s seemed utterly focused, the hooked blades flashing in the light of the setting sun.

Joshin had been sitting on the low wall at the edge of the training grounds, looking like he’d finished training earlier and reading a battered paperback.

For some reason, Goku had felt like he’d be interrupting something if he made his presence known.

It was just one of those things that brought home that most people at the monastery had their own friends and family that they shared history with that no outsider was privy to. It had been like that everywhere on the journey too, but somehow it was different now.

On the journey, he hadn’t much thought what would happen afterwards, or even the next day, beyond the approximate. Travel west, survive, presumably return back to Chang’an. Except, as it turned out, Chang’an hadn’t really had a place for them.

Which was fine, because he still had everyone important. You could learn to live anywhere, as long as you weren’t alone.

Still… it’d be nice if they stayed here long enough not to feel like strangers. It felt like it would be easy. Not everyone liked them, of course, or was friendly, but judging by how busy everyone was they needed all the help they could get here. Besides, the abbot got well along with Sanzo, and he may be old, but no one would dare go against him by being outright unpleasant.  

Which Goku could handle fine, but it was still nice not having to.

He began to slip back to dreams of snow below his bare feet, not cold so much as invigorating, and a voice calling, telling him to come in from the cold…

He woke again as Huamei made a noise, one of her hands tugging at his shirt. Goku opened his eyes and found hers were open too, the greenish blue speckled with light brown this close.

She was rubbing her face on his shirt, mouthing at the fabric with her face crumpled in concentration. Goku held her back, grinning.

“Liu An is here to give you breakfast today, why don’t we go downstairs for that?” he told Huamei, whose small face had gone kinda scrunched up and pouty as it did when she got cold or hungry or both.

She waved her arms and made whiny noises as Goku put her down to dress quickly and then carried her downstairs.

He tramped down the stairs, sure to make enough noise not to startle Huamei’s nurse. She and Gojyo looked up from where they were sat around the table. She tucked a stray strand of dark hair behind one curved ear, the gesture nervous as usual, but she was almost smiling. Her hair was braided into the usual bun, her cheeks red and round like apples.

It was a face built for smiles, but the first few weeks she’d been very timid and serious, and still was. She’d been sent to nurse Huamei with a recommendation from the youkai midwife. Probably, Hakkai pointed out after she’d left the first time, it’d been a two-way recommendation. She probably needed the extra income from the nursing, though she hadn’t said that.

She always arrived and left promptly, walking up and down the mountain regardless of weather.

She spoke softly and flinched at loud noises sometimes.

She was good with Huamei though, handling her gently and with ease. They all left her alone for the nursing, of course, but Huamei clearly felt safe with her.

Sanzo, sitting right next to the brazier, remained buried behind his newspaper as Goku entered the room.

Liu An pulled her hands from beneath her knees, where she had a habit of keeping them as she sat, and got up, her face tilted shyly. She quickly dusted her palms on her long skirt and then held them out to take Huamei.

“Good morning, Mr. Son,” she said, in her usual quiet voice. “Hope you are well today?”

Goku had given up on her not calling him that, as odd as it still sounded, so he just grinned at her.

“Great! And you? Your family?”

It’d been only a while ago when she’d mentioned she had a son who was nearly a year old, and lived with a friend on the outskirts of town.

Liu An ducked her head again.

“I’m well…Chao and Mei are well too,” Liu An said haltingly, before excusing herself to walk upstairs to one of the vacant rooms.

Gojyo had his head tilted at a considering angle as she walked away.

“Did you notice she never said their names until a like two weeks ago?” he said, slight smile hovering on his lips. “Soon she might let one of us walk her home too.”

Sanzo snorted behind his newspaper, and Gojyo turned to him to protest:

“It’s not safe, it’s almost an hour walk just down the mountain and then who knows how far!”

“You think she’ll feel any safer with you?” Sanzo pointed out, giving Gojyo a disdainful look over his reading glasses, and then turned a page. “She doesn’t want any of us knowing where she lives, dumb-ass.”

Gojyo rolled his eyes.

“No shit, genius,” he muttered, ignoring Sanzo’s scowl towards him.

“How about going with her halfway?” Goku suggested.

“Right!” Gojyo agreed.

Sanzo sighed, still scowling.

“Sure, if you really want to become everyone’s mother,” he drawled, putting the paper down with a snap.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gojyo asked, his eyes narrowing.

Goku sighed and began to eat, ignoring the two others for the time being.

“How many times have you visited the orphanage this week?” Sanzo asked. “Three, four times? What did they need help with now, telling bedtime stories? Wiping the little ones’ asses?”

“The heck, Sanzo, you mad I’m actually doing something good now? The hell is your problem?!” Gojyo asked, his eyes widened in disbelief. Then he laughed harshly, rising abruptly.

“Course you would be, gods forbid you should ever care for anyone and let them know it! Try not to be such a bitter old man sometime, why don’t ya, see how it feels!”

He gave Sanzo a disgusted look and stomped off.

In the following silence, Goku chewing slowly on his meat bun seemed uncomfortably loud. He swallowed and dared to look at Sanzo, who was… kind of staring into space.

“…Sanzo?” he asked after a moment, concerned.

Sanzo seemed to startle and then glared at him, seemingly more reflex than anything else. He picked up and opened his newspaper, but Goku could tell he wasn’t really reading it.

In fact, there was an eerily unfamiliar expression on Sanzo’s face.

“Idiot, should stay out of things that are none of his business,” Sanzo muttered.

That seemed unnecessarily harsh, even for him.

“They do need help at the orphanage, with a lot of things,” he pointed out. They’d all been going out to help, and Sanzo had even followed along that one time so he ought to know.

Sanzo shook his head, still with that distant expression.

“You can’t fix the future for them,” he said, which, sure, but that wasn’t really the point.

Goku thought of the little graveyard in the woods not too far from the orphanage, with the small wooden markers, some already growing moss and others not even greyed yet.

He’d accompanied the nun there once, as she read prayers for the dead, in a brisk manner similar to the way she handled the living kids.

“Can try to keep them alive for it, though,” he said.

Sanzo put his paper down again, as if he’d suddenly forgotten he’d been pretending to read it. Slowly, he turned towards Goku, something terrifying in his bleak gaze.

He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by descending footsteps from the stairs.

“Ah, good morning Goku, Sanzo,” Hakkai greeted cheerfully, though Goku didn’t miss the inquisitive glance between him and Sanzo. Knowing Hakkai, he’d heard the entire conversation and just pretended to arrive right then.

Might have been just as well, he wasn’t sure he’d have wanted to hear what Sanzo had been about to say, Goku thought, picking at a loose thread on his jeans.

“Did you pick a fight with Gojyo again?” Hakkai asked Sanzo, still in that same cheerful tone, belied by the glint of steel in his green eyes.

He wasn’t fazed when Sanzo slammed down his newspaper and glared at him either.

“If you’re going to storm off too, don’t stay out too long, there might be more snow on the way,” Hakkai continued easily.

Sanzo hesitated, clearly caught between doing just that and disproving him.

In the end he sat down again, still frowning.

The silence stretched, broken only by the wind howling behind the shutters. Upstairs, Goku could hear Liu An humming, so quietly the tune nearly blended in with the sound of the rising wind.

“The nun and those orphans… it’s like Yakumo and his wards, isn’t it?” Hakkai said, his voice soft. So he wasn’t pretending not to have heard after all.

“Except they did survive the minus wave,” he added more pragmatically.

“Huh,” Goku said. He hadn’t thought of it like that, but he supposed there was some similarity. “You think she killed those kids in the graveyard?” he asked, perturbed by the idea.

It was hard to imagine it of Old Miao, as tough an old lady as she was.

Hakkai shrugged.

“One could hardly ask,” he said primly. “Well, I imagine at least some of them died of perfectly natural causes. I’ve understood there have been problems with food production in the area... which still linger, but were even worse during the wave.”

Goku looked down at his mostly empty bowl, swallowing slowly.

Some of the kids had starved to death? That was… that was bad.

He thought about the tiny vegetable garden at the orphanage and the narrow late carrots and beets they’d pulled out of it right before the first frost.

“In any case, I really would appreciate if you’d try to hold off on antagonising Gojyo,” Hakkai continued. “He… well, he is prone to getting attached. It’s not a bad thing.”

Hakkai sounded slightly uncertain at the end of that sentence.

Sanzo gave him a dark look, and then shrugged.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “Won’t be my problem when things go to hell.”

Hakkai peered at him, head tilted in a birdlike fashion.

“That’s a bit of a defeatist attitude, isn’t it?” he said, in a tone that Goku could see grated on Sanzo.

He only snorted though.

“Hardly,” he said flatly, pretending to read the crumpled newspaper.

Hakkai sighed, seeking Goku’s gaze and then shrugging, as if to say he’d tried.

Goku smiled back at him.

Gojyo and Sanzo bickering wasn’t exactly new. Hell, they’d all fought about dumb things during the journey. He wasn’t sure why something about it seemed off now, out of balance. That had happened before too, but there was no cause to it now that Goku could see.

Sure, the orphans were in a precarious situation, but they didn’t need to hurry on for the mission anymore, and Sanzo didn’t exactly seem like he planned or wanted to go anywhere. So there was no reason not to help them while they could, was there?

It seemed more like Sanzo had said what he did to deliberately start a fight, which was not like him.

“What are you looking at?” Sanzo asked caustically, and Goku realized he’d been staring at him. Whoops.

“Nothing. Just thinking,” he replied.

He considered asking Sanzo why he was being weird, and how he’d be likely to react. Goku sighed, ignoring the looks both Hakkai and Sanzo gave him.

“Well, don’t overtax your tiny brain,” Gojyo commented from right behind him, a heavy hand descending on Goku’s head to ruffle his hair roughly.

He’d heard his returning footsteps ages ago, not to mention the sharp stink of fresh cigarette smoke clinging to him.

Goku batted at the hand in his hair half-heartedly.

“Ugh, stop that,” he protested, mostly for show. At least Gojyo was the same as ever, just with some extra swirls on him.

*

Liu An shook her head, dislodging a few stray snowflakes from her hair.

“I’ll be fine, the snowfall isn’t that thick yet and I can hardly miss the way… besides, Mei would worry if I didn’t show up,” she said in reply to Hakkai’s repeated offer to stay over at the monastery for the night.

As usual, her speech with him was unfailingly polite and just slightly wary.

Goku got that, to a point. Hakkai was objectively dangerous.

Gojyo blew into his hands and rubbed them together. Hakkai frowned at him.

“Where are your gloves?” he asked.

“Uhhhm, somewhere,” Gojyo muttered, and then shrugged.

“Seriously, Gojyo,” Hakkai chided, but there was no real bite to his voice.

Liu An ducked her head, smile hovering on her lips.

The four of them were walking through the monastery.

The buildings seemed to huddle together under the falling snow. Right then the wind had settled for the moment, but occasionally a gust would spin the flakes into loose spirals, tumbling them against the grey sky.

Gojyo peered at it, frowning.

“You sure you don’t want some company, at least down the mountain path?” he asked Liu An. “The snow’s falling pretty hard now…”

She actually looked considering.

“Eh, I wouldn’t want to be a bother,” she demurred, but for the first time like her heart wasn’t in it.

Gojyo grinned.

“You know, we travelled all the way to India to help the monk find some moldy scriptures, going halfway down one mountain is nothing.”

Liu An looked scandalised.

“Mr Sha, that’s…” she shook her head.

“I think what Ms. Liu is saying, Gojyo, is that finding the scriptures was fairly important, don’t you think,” Hakkai said drily. “Considering what they were being used for…”

“Oh, yeah. Shit. Sorry Liu,” Gojyo said, looking genuinely regretful, and then alarmed as Liu An raised a hand to her face and her shoulders shook under her heavy coat.

“You ok?” he asked, eyes gone wide and panicked, a hand hovering over her shoulder.

Liu looked up, one hand still pressed over her mouth, and her eyes crinkled.

She let out a single audible chuckle and shook her head again.

“You really are something. Oh, very well, if you really want to walk down the mountain… I guess that might be good.”

Gojyo grinned once more.

“Ok, great! You know Huamei would be devastated if anything happened to you.”

Liu An shook her head, but some of the earlier amusement lingered in her eyes.

When they approached the last gate, Goku hesitated. He could go with Hakkai and Gojyo, but it’d be nice to actually spend some time with just Sanzo. He’d been busy getting to know everyone or helping out either at the monastery or the orphanage, and he supposed Sanzo had been busy talking with Seiran and whatever else he did when he disappeared somewhere.

“You ok with just the two of you… I mean three?” he asked, nodding apologetically at Liu.

“Still scared of the snow?” Gojyo teased, and Goku rolled his eyes.

“I haven’t since years ago, your ancient brain forgetting stuff again?” he asked, pushing at Gojyo, who immediately pushed him back.

“Please, not in front of Ms. Liu,” Hakkai demurred.

“I used to have three brothers, I’m used to it,” she said softly, with a rueful smile hovering on her lips, though her eyes were sad.

Goku stood at the gate as they walked away. Gojyo’s red hair shone like a banner against the monochrome landscape, but the three forms were obscured by the falling snow even before they disappeared down the stairs.

“Goku! Up here!” a voice called to him, and he looked up to see Shun hanging from the open window of the watchtower, smiling widely.

“Want to come up here? I’ve got some tea?” the young monk asked hopefully.

“Sure!” Goku agreed, though not before thinking longingly of the warm room at the mansion.

He’d heard the monks complain enough to know that no one liked being stuck on watch duty in the drafty little room in the tower.

“It still feels weird being up here alone,” Shu mentioned once they were huddled around the little foot warmer up in the tower. “Not so long ago it was always at least two on watch.”

He stared out at the falling snow, some of it getting in through the shutters, and shivered despite the heavy robes and cape he was wearing.

“Was it bad, during the minus wave?” Goku asked.

Shun shrugged, smiling wanly.

“We got attacked a few times but… well, it was pretty safe here. It was worse down in the valley.”

He stared down at his knees, pulled against his chest.

“You know we tried to help? Even the youkai, right? Though of course I didn’t get to go on the more dangerous missions since I was still a novice back then, until it was all pretty much over.”

He smiled bleakly.

“Lucky me, I guess.”

Now he thought about it, Goku had noticed the monks at the monastery skewed towards the very old and the very young. Or the ones that were really good at martial arts.

“Oh,” he said.

Shun flushed.

“Sorry, here I asked you to join me and now I’m being a wet rag,” he said and laughed awkwardly. “Want some tea? I think it’s still warm.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Goku said.

It was funny, he thought as Shun poured the tea, how young he seemed. He wasn’t used to that, people who weren’t little kids feeling younger. Maybe he was getting old.

Shun put the teapot down and leaned forward eagerly, his eyes shining in the low light inside the room.

“You know, I heard that you once fought a heretic god, is that true?”

*

About forty minutes later, Goku waved goodbye to Shun.

Snow was still falling, piled up on the courtyards and rooftops. The wind was picking up too.

Good thing Hakkai and Gojyo were walking with Liu An, Goku though.

Back at the mansion, the room with the table was warm and cozy from the charcoal burner piled high, the slight smell of smoke adding to the atmosphere. Sanzo was asleep under a heavy blanket, upper body leaned against the table.

They’d left Huamei sleeping on her blanket surrounded by her army of second hand toys, which were still scattered all over the heavy fabric.

But she wasn’t there.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The culmination of the plot, such as it is.

Goku stopped in the doorway, before stepping forward and shaking Sanzo awake.

“Where’s Huamei?” he asked.

“What, she’s right…” Sanzo began, and then stopped when he saw the empty blankets. His lips pinched shut and colour drained from his face.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“Sanzo, she’s been learning to crawl,” Goku heard himself say, his heart seeming to skip a beat. What if she’d fallen from the balcony? She could move unexpectedly fast when she wanted to.

“Was the door open?” Sanzo asked, staring fixedly at the door Goku had left open behind him, now letting in gusts of snow.

Shit, had it been? Goku thought back frantically, for a dreadful moment unsure if it had or not. But…

“No, it was closed. She couldn’t have opened it, right?”

Sanzo shook his head, still looking faintly shell shocked.

“No, and certainly wouldn’t have closed it behind herself,” Sanzo muttered.

He was still staring at the empty blanket. Then he looked around the room and settled on Goku, eyes burning bright on his pale face.

“You can find her,” he said, with absolute certainty.

Goku nodded. Maybe it was the shock, but his senses had gone hypersensitive again, perusing the room.

There was a smell that didn’t belong there. He knew he’d felt it before, but it wasn’t familiar enough to connect to a name. A threat? Maybe, his instincts said, though uncertainly. Old cotton like the monks wore and skin that was slightly grimy but with a neutral undertone… a child? It was overlaid with the blurred smell of despair with a tinge of fear.

He got the image of a sullen, thin face, eyes that slid away when he met them openly but bore into his back as he turned away.

“Li was here,” he said, the voice sounding distant, unfamiliar.

“Who?” Sanzo asked.

“One of the kids, an orphan. I think youkai killed his family,” Goku said, still feeling like someone else was speaking the words.

Sanzo cursed, but Goku was already turning away to go back through the door. Now he was following the trail, he could almost see it, the boy carrying Huamei, the smell of his fear almost swamping her sour-milk scent.

He had to go after him, get her back and—

“Goku,” a hoarse voice said, and there was something wrapped around his wrist.

He could break that hold easily, he thought coldly, head swinging around.

Grim purple eyes met his.

“Don’t you dare,” Sanzo hissed, and behind the usual determination was alarm.

Goku blinked, the red haze lifting.

“I’m fine,” he said slowly.

Sanzo’s fingers on his wrist were grinding into the bone. It didn’t hurt, though. Goku didn’t think Sanzo was strong enough to hurt him now, certainly not without the sutras.

He smiled, and Sanzo’s eyes widened slightly, the alarm not waning.

Goku shook his head again, as if to shake something away. He felt like… whatever it was that had surfaced just now was still there, or close to, like an animal waking and sniffing at the air.

“I’m me,” he said.

Sanzo couldn’t tell? Well, how could he, he’d look the same either way wouldn’t he? But it felt like he should have.

Something flickered in those violet eyes, and then his face hardened, all trace of vulnerability hidden again.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said, which Goku could only agree with.

He nodded wordlessly.

Outside, the wind was howling properly now, throwing snow in their faces before they turned back inside the monastery.

They asked the few people they met who were still awake, but none of them had seen the boy or Huamei.

“Why didn’t she cry?” Sanzo muttered, his face pale in the shadows of the corridor, and Goku shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Soon the trail led outside, going in a straight path towards forested slope where the training woods were.

Sanzo’s face grew progressively grimmer, but neither of them commented on it. They’d been running for a while, mostly uphill, and his breath was coming out in choppy wheezes that worried the part of Goku that wasn’t focused on finding Huamei as fast as possible.

The boy probably hated youkai, and he was taking her into the woods…

It was growing properly dark now, early with the heavy clouds covering the sun, but he could still see easily. For a while they followed the well-trodden path to the children’s training fields, and then a single trail diverged from it, the footsteps sunk deep and barely blurred with fallen snow yet. He’d walked here recently.

After that, Goku didn’t even need the scent trail.

“Goku, wait,” Sanzo wheezed, having somehow managed to keep up, and Goku stopped abruptly.

He turned, and waited impatiently as Sanzo bent in half and gasped for breath.

“We… can’t just run up on him, he has a hostage,” he managed to say eventually, and Goku frowned. He couldn’t recall them ever worrying about something like that before.

“I’m faster than him,” he snapped, and Sanzo glared at him.

“And what if he has a knife to her throat and starts?” he snapped back, and Goku recoiled at the idea.

“He can’t be far now, let’s just go. But quietly,” Sanzo said, and Goku nodded.

The wind was quieter here, he realized as they continued walking through the wood. Must have been on the lee side of the mountain. Snow covered the ground and the bare, ghostly trees in a thick blanket, making up fantastic forms at the corner of his eyes as he scanned around.

Sanzo’s arm struck his chest, and Goku stopped, but he could see it too.

The boy, standing in the snow, his back towards them.

He was standing right at the edge of the cliff.

Goku stepped forward, and then froze as the boy started and turned, his face a pale oval against the darkening sky.

Goku could just see one of Huamei’s feet where the boy held her, poking out of the blanket she was bundled in, the small foot encased in the red slipped Hakkai had sewn for her.

Would he be fast enough to catch her if the boy dropped her? Maybe.

“You!” Sanzo shouted, sudden as a gunshot on the quiet mountainside, and the boy started again. “What’s your name?”

The boy stared at him wordlessly for a long moment, his eyes wide. Every now and again, his eyes flickered towards Goku, and he shuffled backwards, not seeming to notice or remember how close to the edge he was standing.

“L-Li,” he stuttered. “Xun Li.”

Stating his name seemed to give him some confidence, and the boy raised his head higher, his expression growing hard.

“What are you doing with the baby, Li?” Sanzo asked, his voice flat, not friendly but not exactly aggressive either.

When Goku glanced at him, his eyes were like glass.

The boy’s eyes flashed with anger.

“She’s a youkai,” he said slowly, his voice rising as he continued, almost shrill. “Do you know what they did? They’re all monsters! She’ll grow up to one too if you let her!”

He was panting by the end of it, breath coming out in great puffs of white into the cold air.

“So?” Sanzo asked, softly this time.

“I… I… Don’t come closer! Or I’ll drop her!” Lin shouted at Goku who’d made a move to inch closer.

He froze, almost vibrating in place. What was Sanzo doing? Did he have a plan? In that case Goku wished he knew what it was.

“And then what?”

Sanzo asked it like it was a theoretical question, with little interest and with thinly veiled disdain, and Goku could have growled with frustration.

Li seemed distressed too, his small face distorted with terror.

“What do you think happens to you then?” Sanzo continued, and he sounded terrifying, even to Goku.

The boy shook his head.

“They killed everyone, even my baby sister,” he whispered, and now his face was as blank as Sanzo’s voice had been before.

“She didn’t do any of that!” Goku shouted, done with waiting to see what Sanzo planned to do. He probably didn’t even have a plan.

Li started again, almost took a step over the empty space behind him.

“XUN LI, STOP!” Sanzo shouted, and the boy did as if frozen.

“Look at her,” he said, sounding tired. “Just look at her, properly.”

“W-why should I?” Li stammered, but he didn’t seem to be able to help himself.

It was only then that Goku realized how quiet Huamei had been, and now as Li half turned, he could suddenly see her face.

She was looking up at the boy, big eyes solemn. It might have been her danger mode, but she just looked calm, serene even.

Li stared at her for a long, drawn out moment. Goku could have run over to snatch her up then, but he didn’t even think about it, because something… something was happening here, and he wasn’t sure what.

Li took a staggering step back from the edge and fell on his knees as thought he’d been cut down.

His head bowed and he began to cry, the drops falling on Huamei’s face.

She blinked, and then began to cry too, quietly at first and then with heightened intensity.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Li whispered, but Goku wasn’t listening, running over to grab Huamei from him.

Li blinked at him, but he seemed to be beyond terror, the tears still falling down his face.

He could only be ten at most, Goku thought distantly, as Huamei continued to cry right in his ear. He didn’t care, because her crying meant she was still breathing, still had a beating heart. Wasn’t one of Yakumo’s kids, laughing and playing one moment and dead and cold the next.

He looked towards Sanzo, and found him looking at the boy. He had a gun in his hand, must have taken it out after he’d told the boy to look at Huamei, and. Oh.

Sanzo looked up at him, and his eyes were shuttered, like the light had gone out of them. He nodded stiffly at Goku and turned, walking away the way they’d come, halting slightly.

Goku could only watch as he disappeared from view.

He only vaguely remembered walking back to the monastery, Huamei on one arm and dragging the boy with the other.

Li didn’t say anything, just walked after him with a vaguely shell-shocked expression.

When they were nearly to the outermost buildings, his stomach growled loudly, and Goku looked down at himself in surprise. Well, he hadn’t actually eaten since… lunch? Was that just today? It felt like an eon ago.

He looked down, and the boy was staring at him, his eyes wide and face deathly pale.

“Are you… gonna eat me now?” he asked, completely serious.

Goku stared back at him.

“No?” he said.

Li nodded.

“I see,” he replied, a bizarrely grown up phrase.

“I might if you try kill Huamei again though,” Goku added, not really surprised it came out nearly as a growl. He wasn’t sure he didn’t mean it either, which might warrant a discussion with Hakkai. Later.

Li blinked.

“Ok,” he said, in a very small voice. “I… I won’t. I think…”

He looked down at the snow beneath his sandaled feet.

“I think it was a mistake,” he said quietly, and then rubbed roughly at the corner of one eye and sniffled wetly.

He definitely wasn’t ten yet, Goku amended to himself.

“Ok,” he replied, feeling tired and hungry and miserable.

Goku hesitated, and then set off in a direction he knew well by then.

When he stepped inside, abbot Seiran seemed surprised to see him, and more so as he dragged Li in after him.

“This is Li,” Goku said, too tired for any kind of diplomacy. “He tried to drop Huamei off a cliff. I think he regrets it now though.”

Next to him, the boy blinked in the light, still wearing that shell-shocked expression.

“Oh. Did you?” Seiran asked.

“Yes,” Li replied woodenly.

Seiran put the paper in his hands down and sighed, before looking up at Goku.

“I hope the child is unharmed?” he asked, frowning in concern.

“Yeah,” Goku replied. “I’d like to… go check, though?”

Maybe Hakkai and Gojyo would be back.

Seiran nodded decisively.

“I see, you should do that. I’ll take care of things here,” he said, nodding towards the boy who was looking kind of unsteady on his feet by then.

Goku didn’t need to be told twice. Seiran was fair, he’d make a good decision about what to do with Li. Goku really needed to just get away from him right then.

They’d left the door open, he realized as he stepped into the room. The brazier had gone out and the room was freezing. It was also empty.

He found Sanzo in his room, sitting on the bed with his back against the wall, hands hanging empty on his crossed legs. It was barely warmer there than the outer room. He was staring at the far wall, eyes flickering over to Goku as he opened the door and then away again.

Goku walked in and sat next to him on the bed.

Huamei had stopped crying a while back, and clutched Goku’s jacket with both fists. She looked upset but like she’d already cried herself out and was now drooping from exhaustion.

She must have known she was in danger, and been so quiet because of that, Goku reckoned. It had just seemed strange at the time because he’d been so scared.

Huamei sniffled and buried her face in his jacket, and he absently pet at the wisps on fine hair on her head.

Sanzo was quiet at his side, except for the sound of his breath.

In the light coming in through the half-open door, Sanzo’s face was lit in sharp relief against the deep shadows on the wall at the side. It shoved every scar and wrinkle on it, even the ones not usually visible.

For all the times he’d seen Sanzo injured, he’d never seemed breakable. Goku wasn’t stupid, he knew Sanzo had gone through a lot and had the scars to prove it. And not just on his body, either.

Goku didn’t always understand him, completely, but he’d seen Sanzo at the end of his rope, knew some of the things that got under his skin. None of them liked losing, losing a fight or losing a person. Probably no one did, Goku supposed. But Sanzo… you had to look closely, to see him being kind, and it was always a harsh sort of kindness.

Sanzo had told him, once, that if Goku lost his mind to the minus wave he would kill him, and Goku had held that truth since then, secure in the knowledge he would.

But then Sanzo had run away after he almost died and he’d wondered…

Neither of them was like Hakkai, who’d told them he wouldn’t kill Gojyo, would defend him against Sanzo, even. That was where his weakness was. He would never let go of the few things he really cared about, not willingly.

Sanzo would have tried, Goku was still certain of that. Maybe he could have even done it.

But Goku would not have asked that of him, now.

Sanzo carried things on his own and would never say it was too much. But everyone had a breaking point, eventually.

He looked tired, now, in a way he hadn’t during the trip, when even at the worst of time there been an unquenchable fire to him.

Maybe, Goku thought suddenly, it was a good thing?

“Were you going to shoot him?” he asked.

Maybe it was the wrong thing to ask, when he already looked this haunted, but Goku wasn’t good at subtle, and really, neither was Sanzo.

Sanzo almost startled, giving Goku a long blank look, before he leaned his head on one hand and laughed hollowly.

“Maybe,” he said distantly, and it was eerily alike the way Lin had admitted to planning to kill Huamei. “That would have been some kind of record, probably,” he added in the same tone.

He closed his eyes, as if the lids were too heavy to keep up, and then drew a hand through his hair. Goku realized it was damp with sweat and melted snow both.

Unthinking, he reached out a hand to Sanzo’s face, knuckles brushing against clammy skin. He hadn’t been wearing a jacket, Goku realized, worry forming a heavy lump in his stomach. Sanzo didn’t react to the touch, his eyes still closed.

“He probably would have fallen off the cliff still holding her, and it’d have been useless,” Sanzo muttered, and then his eyes blinked open and fastened on Huamei as if to make sure she was still there.

 She looked truly half-asleep now, her eyelids drooping.

Sanzo reached out the hand with missing fingers and just laid it on her head. Huamei made a content noise and leaned into the touch.

Now was probably Goku’s one chance to get an honest reply to something he’d been wondering about, and maybe he should have felt bad for using it, but…

“Did you hear her, at the village?” he asked.

Just like he’d heard him, and like Sanzo had once said his own teacher once heard him… he really shouldn’t have been able to find her otherwise.

Sanzo was still watching Huamei, as if mesmerized, or like he was too tired to move.

“I heard something,” he replied slowly. “For a moment I thought it was--” and then he seemed to wake from whatever trance he’d fallen into and frowned, shaking his head.

“Never mind,” he said. “I knew she was there, that’s all.”

He leaned back against the wall, hand falling away. Still looking tired but more present, more like himself.

“The Maten sutra used to be inherited by a demon,” he said, seemingly out of nowhere. “The one most suited to killing them, isn’t that curious?”

“Huh,” Goku said, and then looked down at Huamei. “You’re thinking…”

“She’s a bit young to become a Sanzo,” Sanzo said, a sardonic smile on his lips when Goku checked. “Although for all the times she has tried to grab them…” he added.

Goku laughed, loud in the quiet room, tension he hadn’t even noticed escaping with it.

He leaned to the side, until his shoulder touched Sanzo’s, and sighed.

“I’d be better for her if she didn’t,” Sanzo added bleakly. “But I might not get a say in it.”

Sanzo admitting something was out of his hands was…

“We already beat destiny once, didn’t we?” Goku said, and Sanzo snorted.

“Ha,” he said.

“You… you won’t need anyone to inherit them soon anyway, will you?” Goku asked, though the words were unwilling to come out, sticking in his throat. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the answer, or he’d have asked before.

Sanzo was quiet, for too long.

Then he sighed, sounding almost put upon, and as Goku looked over, Sanzo was giving him an odd look, equally fond and exasperated.

And then his eyes narrowed, as if in determination, and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“I don’t seem to have anyone reliable to take them on at the moment,” he said with his usual dry humour.

Goku reached an arm around him and buried his face in Sanzo’s sleeve, ignoring the smell of fear-sweat that still clung to him. Unseen, he smiled.

Nothing could stop Sanzo if he was determined enough, not enemies or sickness or the heavy burdens he carried.

Sanzo didn’t move away, and the silence that descended over them was almost peaceful.

Goku figured that was the best he could expect. Except then, as he was starting to recall how hungry he was, and that he should probably see to it that Sanzo got something warm to drink and changed out of his clammy clothes, and where were Hakkai and Gojyo anyway…?

Right as he was starting to think about all that, a weight fell on his back, pulling him closer.

He closed his eyes and smiled wider, a fond warmth spreading in his chest.

No one else had this, and it was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For someone with little interest in children I sure love kidfic... and for someone who liked kidfic, I don't much care for writing young babies, because they are kind of limited, action and characterization wise. So originally, I planned to get that part over with fast and write more when Huamei is a toddler or older. But then I realized how difficult that was to do (iow throwing the readers in an unfamiliar situation and charas which the main charas supposedly know already. And besides I couldn't see the tension I'd written between Sanzo and Goku just continuing for years and years. So what you see is what you get.
> 
> I still might have written certain things differently if I'd had more time than about three weeks before deadline during the christmas rush... then again I might have just procrastinated even more. Writing this has felt pretty challenging and I hope anyone following this fic has gotten something out of it. 
> 
> Coming up, the fluffy (?) epilogue I'm going to see about finishing rn, and pooossibly some ficlets set in the future of this verse, since I still have those ideas I couldn't write in this one due to it unfolding earlier than my original idea. Thanks for everyone who has kudosed and commented so far while I've despaired over all the faults I know or suspect this story has! You rock! :'D


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of last night's events, and Sanzo and Goku have a difficult conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short one, and I possibly shouldn't post this while I can barely see straight, but it's already later than I wanted so here it goes :')

Hakkai and Gojyo returned the following morning, red-cheeked and cheerful after a morning trek in the freshly fallen snow, having spent the night at Liu An’s barn. Their cheer quickly evaporated when they found out about the events of the previous evening.

Hakkai made sure Huamei wasn’t hurt, and then Gojyo picked her up and didn’t let her down the rest of the day unless he had to.

Goku couldn’t exactly blame him.

While they were speaking with Seiran and a few other monks about Li, Goku noticed Sanzo’s voice was even more hoarse than usual and he was smothering a cough. His heart sank, and he saw Hakkai giving worried looks his way as well.

In the end it was decided that Li was too young to face any kind of serious punishment, but would be monitored closely.

After the decision was reached, the other monks left, and Sanzo told Hakkai and Gojyo to go ahead. He might have expected Goku to leave as well, but he didn’t say anything when he didn’t.

“I feel responsible for this,” Doutaku said, looking older than usual with the grim expression on his face. “I should have talked to the boy more, I knew he wasn’t well. I’ll see to it he won’t be left alone again.”

Hyperaware of Sanzo as he was, Goku saw him move as if to say something, and then hesitate. Then he shook his head.

“It’s a good idea, but I will speak to him too,” he said.

It wasn’t phrased as a request.

Abbot Seiran raised his eyebrows, but his voice was calm and non-confrontative when he replied:

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Sanzo smiled, or at least showed his teeth.

“No, but I would anyway.”

When the abbot still looked dubious, he added:

“I don’t expect to know how to help this boy better than Doutaku or someone else, and probably have less interest in it, but it’s my job to try,” he said, head raised at a proud angle. And then, more quietly. “Besides, I know what it’s like to be consumed by hate and despair.”

Seiran smiled sadly.

“I would imagine, Genjo,” he said softly.

It was still strange to hear anyone call Sanzo by that name, Goku thought, and then wondered at the odd ache in his chest. He lowered his head, and almost missed as Sanzo rose to leave, hurrying after him. Before Sanzo had had time to step outside, though, Seiran’s calm voice stopped him.

“Koumyou would have been proud to see you as you are now,” he said, and when Goku looked towards him, there was a solemn smile lingering on his lined face.

Sanzo shook his head, not turning right away, and when he did, his expression was unreadable.

“You don’t think he’d have been biased at all?” he said, voice light and wry as if he was talking about something that mattered little to him either way.

Doutaku grinned, some of his usual good mood seemingly reclaimed.

“Probably,” he said, and then shrugged. “Or perhaps not, no offence, but one never quite knew where one had that guy.” He laughed, good naturedly.

Sanzo was giving him a strange look, but in the end he just shook his head.

Then he sneezed violently, frowning afterwards as if it was a personal insult.

“Damn it,” he muttered, one hand rising to rub at his temple.

“You should rest,” Seiran said, and Sanzo sighed.

“I suppose so,” he muttered, more obviously tired than Goku was used to hearing. He drifted closer, and Sanzo gave him an irritable glance.

“Let’s go then,” he snapped. “Have a good day,” he told Seiran and Doutaku in almost the same tone, but the two old monks didn’t seem insulted by it.

Once they were back at the mansion, Sanzo went to bed directly, ignoring the lunch already laid out. Hakkai went to check on him, returning with a frown.

“Fever,” he said shortly, sitting down abruptly at his place at the table.

Gojyo frowned too.

“How rude was he to you?” he asked, chopsticks hovering over his plate, leaving a juicy looking piece of fried fish open for attack. Goku was planning to make a move towards it when Hakkai spoke, smiling wanly down at his plate.

 “Hardly at all,” he said quietly.

“Huh,” Gojyo said.

A concerned silence hung over the table, and even Huamei seemed to notice the oppressive mood, squirming where she was seated in Gojyo’s lap.

Goku thought about it, and then struck suddenly, snatching the piece of fish from Gojyo’s plate and stuffing it in his mouth.

“Oy!” Gojyo cried, looking betrayed.

Goku swallowed the fish and grinned at him.

“Your fault for being distracted,” he said, and then added. “Anyway, Sanzo’ll be fine.”

Hakkai gave him a searching look, and then smiled cautiously at whatever he found.

“You really think that, don’t you?” he said, sounding pleased.

“Of course,” Goku told him, blinking as if surprised. He knew, of course, why Hakkai said that, the fear they’d all carried the last months while trying to not say it aloud.

Gojyo laughed loudly, and the movement and sound caused Huamei to wave her arms and shout as well.

Something thumped against the door inside Sanzo’s room, and a croaky voice told them to shut the fuck up or die.

Gojyo kept laughing, and even Hakkai was chuckling a little.

“You better learn to duck gunshots when you get bigger,” Gojyo told Huamei who blinked innocently up at him, and then began to chew on his hair contentedly.

Goku smiled, glad that the gloomy mood of before had been dissolved, and keeping half-an-eye on his plate just in case Gojyo retaliated.

 

*

Later that evening, he ducked in to see Sanzo after Hakkai had already checked up on him. He’d left to go upstairs after, so it couldn’t be too serious, Goku reckoned. Despite that, he was relieved to see that Sanzo didn’t look too bad in the light of the lamp on his nightstand. A bit flushed with fever and his breathing sounded congested, but no worse than that. He was lying half-propped up against the pile of pillows that had pretty much permanent residence in his bed these days.

He was staring up at the canopy of his bed, eyes half-lidded, and turned towards the door as Goku stepped in, a neutral expression on his face.

“What now?” Sanzo asked.

Goku walked in and pulled a chair to sit at the side of the bed.

“Hakkai said you were awake now, I thought you might need some company,” he said simply.

Sanzo scoffed, but he didn’t tell Goku to leave.

Instead, he closed his eyes for such a long moment Goku might have thought he was falling asleep, if he couldn’t hear from his breathing that he wasn’t.

Eventually he opened his eyes again and gave Goku a resigned look.

“Goku,” he said, and then paused, looking pained with… exasperation, perhaps. It wasn’t an expression Goku recognized.

“Yes?” he replied.

“You have feelings for me, don’t you,” Sanzo said after a moment’s silence.

Goku sat on his seat and gaped at him for a long moment, feeling like he’d been given a stunning blow to the head. Then his face warmed, more out of the suddenness of the question than anything else.

“What?” he said, wincing inwardly at how dumb it sounded.

For once, Sanzo waited patiently, or at least patiently enough to only frown lightly as Goku gathered himself. Before he was quite done, he added warningly:

“And we both know what I meant so don’t play stupid.”

Goku could at least reply to that.

“You’re the one always calling me a stupid monkey,” he protested.

“Only when you act like one,” Sanzo fired back just as quickly, causing Goku to sputter.

He found himself barking out a laugh at the absurdity of the argument suddenly, after Sanzo had asked him if he--

The laughter dried up, leaving him only with the heavy feeling in his stomach. He looked down at the floor for a moment, before taking a deep breath and meeting Sanzo’s eyes determinately.

“Yes,” he said, feeling his heart hammering in his chest like he’d been running.

Sanzo just looked at his for a long moment, once again with that unreadable neutral expression. It made Goku only more nervous, being unable to read him. Why had he even taken this up?

“I,” Sanzo began, hesitated and frowned as if irritated, and then seemed to regain his momentum. “I knew that. Since a while ago,” he said, his voice clipped.

Goku nodded wordlessly, not particularly surprised.

“I thought at first it was just the sort of attachment any child might have as they grew up. Later, I hoped you would get over it with time,” Sanzo said, still in that same mildly uncomfortable tone.

Goku looked down at the floor again, wondering why Sanzo felt they had to hash this all out now, rather than just keep ignoring it. When it had been so easy just last night.

“And don’t look like that,” Sanzo snapped, causing Goku to raise his head quickly, the low-level irritation that had been lurking at the sides of his mind flaring to life.

“Then stop rubbing my face in it! I know you’re not interested, that’s why I haven’t said anything before!”

A hand wrapped around his collar, half pulling him out of the chair, and he found Sanzo glowering right into his eyes, his own narrowed in irritation.

“Shut up and listen!” he hissed, before releasing Goku so abruptly he almost unbalanced the chair as he sat down again.

His voice was hoarse with strain from talking so much as he continued, and Goku felt a flash of guilt before telling himself it was Sanzo who’d decided they had to have this all out now.

“I’ve little interest in sex,” Sanzo said bluntly, his gaze distant. “I tried it a few times when I was younger but there was little appeal.”

He said it matter of fact, the discomfort of earlier gone.

“Who?” Goku asked, unthinkingly, and Sanzo made an impatient gesture with his hand as if to wave the question away.

“Just people I met while journeying after… after I left Kinzan,” he said, and then added quickly in reaction to whatever he saw on Goku’s face. “None of them were unkind, and not always unskilled. I think,” he said dourly. A shadow passed over his face, and he added, blankly. “I killed the ones that tried to force the issue.”

“Oh,” Goku said, feeling as cold in the pit of his stomach as Sanzo’s eyes were right then.

He sighed, feeling some of the tension leak out of him, leaving behind only weariness.

“Why did you do it?” he asked, and then clarified. “Try it with the other people, I mean.”

Sanzo shrugged.

“I think I wanted to prove I could,” he said, with a bleak but genuine smile.

Goku thought about it.

“And why did you tell me now?” he asked slowly.

Sanzo lay down on the bed, his gaze drawn by the shadowed canopy above again. He was frowning, almost pained, but he didn’t smell like he was in physical pain. Whatever he was trying to say it wasn’t coming out easy, Goku realized, something he’d known all along on some level.

“If I told you to find someone else to hang on to like a burr, what would you do?” Sanzo asked, the words sudden, his face smoothing somewhat as he said them. His eyes, when they turned on Goku, were clear and incisive, under the weariness.

He thought about it, until he found something that felt like truth.

“I’d say that’s for me to decide.” he said softly, but hearing the steadiness in his own voice. Maybe Sanzo did too, because he smiled just barely.

“And, I’d say I don’t think I’ve bothered you, or relied on you too much, but if you really told me to go away, I’d.”

He swallowed, thinking about it.

“I wouldn’t go far, because you’re my friend, and so are Hakkai and Gojyo, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere too far either. So, if you’d want to be alone, fine, but I’d be around in case you changed your mind.”

That smile still hovered on Sanzo’s lips, something just slightly bitter, as most of his smiles were. But his eyes were alight, and not just with fever.

He nodded, as if to himself.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he croaked, and Goku got up to get the pitcher on the nightstand, pouring water from it into a glass on the same table. He handed it to Sanzo wordlessly and he drank deep from it.

“So,” he said as he put it down, eyes trained on the shadows on the other side of the room, beyond the slats of wood holding up the bed canopy. “I think, given time, you might find someone easier to love.” His voice was almost contemplative. And he said it as a hypothetical.

Goku stood very still at the side of the bed, as if he’d been turned into a statue. The house was quiet around them, the old wood settling slowly under the weight of snow and use, creaking intermittently as if it were alive. The snow made a sliding sound as it fell of the roof onto nothing.

“I might,” Goku replied as if in a dream. “I don’t care about whether it’s be easy or not, though.”

Sanzo nodded.

“Sometimes, things should be done, even if they're difficult,” he agreed.

Goku looked down at him, wondering wildly where this was going, if he even dared to hope that--

“Sit down,” Sanzo said abruptly, the skin around his eyes pinched just slightly.

“Where?” Goku asked, and Sanzo rolled his eyes and gave a sharp tug at his arm until he sat down on the side of the bed, leaving them eye to eye again.

Sanzo put a hand on his shoulder.

“It… probably won’t be all you want. I can’t give any promises—” he began, voice stilted and then paused, looking irritated again but this time Goku tentatively believed it was aimed at himself, at things that were difficult to put to words.  

He pulled down the hand on his shoulder and wrapped his own around it, feeling like he was holding some fragile thing along with the blunt, bony fingers.

“Then don’t,” he said, calm at last. “I’ll take it, anyway.”

There was joy there, like a vein of water from deep underground bubbling towards the surface, clear and ready to grow into a large river, somewhere in the unseen distance. There was no hurrying to get there, no need to force it. The water would find its own way. And if it didn’t, maybe it would find another purpose.

“I’ll take anything you’re willing to give,” Goku said, feeling shy for the first time during the conversation, and even Sanzo wouldn’t meet his eyes for a moment, his brow furrowing in embarrassment.  

Then he turned back, determined, and leaned forward to capture Goku’s face with his free hand. He stilled as the rough-tipped fingers touched his cheek, a thumb pressing just under his chin, stilled as if frozen as Sanzo leaned forward, eyes open and cautious as if he was approaching something dangerous.

When their lips met, Sanzo’s were slightly parched, and the touch of them was brief and almost impersonal.

But it felt like a seal on a binding agreement, and Goku felt a thrill travel over his spine, his skin rising to gooseflesh.

Here was the first step onto an open road, no one knowing where or how it would end. That was what made it worthwhile, the not-knowing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was almost as difficult to write in points as it was for Sanzo to talk about feelings, even in as roundabout way as he did. Also, this is a somewhat recent thing, and I didn't quite plan for it to be relevant or at least so explicit in this fic but... surprise ace!Sanzo? :'D another thing I should have tagged, just like the spoilers. I') This is why one shouldn't post gifts as WIPs. :T
> 
> And again, this is not the last chapter since there's at least one more that's in the works. That one ought to be more fluff and less awkward conversation, if any readers are hanging on. Edit: Think I'll post further chapters as separate stories and call this done. At least one might have a slightly higher rating than I can stretch this one to, so that feels safer. :') See you!


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